Labor Precarity and Unionism in Chile New Directions and Strategies Of

Home , 2010 in Chile, New Unionism

Labor Precarity and Unionism in Chile

New Directions and Strategies of Workers in a Context of Labor

Precarity (1975-2010)

Dissertation

Zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades

doctor philosophiae (Dr. Phil.).

vorgelegt dem Rat der Fakultät für Sozial-und Verhaltenswissenschaften der Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena von Dasten Alfonso Julián Vejar geboren am 14.04.1983 in Osorno, Chile

Gutachter

1. Prof. Dr. Klaus Dörre, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena

2. Prof. Dr. Christopher Köhler, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena

Datum der mündlichen Prüfung:

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Table of Contents

List of Tables…………………….……………………………………………………… xii

Acknowledgements……………………..………………………………………….…... xiii

Summary……………………………..………………………………………………..... xiv

Zusammenfassung………………………………………………………………………. xvi

PART I. INTRODUCTION TO RESEARCH………………….……………………... 1

Chapter One: Introduction ………………………………….……………………...…….. 2 1.1.- Research Topic and Questions………………….………………………………….. 2 1.2.- Case Selection……………………….…………………………………………..…... 6 1.2.1.- Labor Precarity in Latin America……………………………………... 6 1.2.2.- Chile: a Paradigmatic case for the Institutionalization of Labor Precarity.… 7 1.2.3.- Unions as an Object of Labor Precarity…..………………………….……... 8 1.2.4.- Summary of Research Proposal..……………………...……………... …... 10 1.3.- Research Thesis……………………..…………..………………………………..…. 10 1.4.- Structure of the Presentation………..………………….……………………………. 10

PART II. THEORETICAL APPROACH TO PRECARITY…………………………………………………………………………..... 15 Chapter Two: Labor Precarity. Perspectives in the North and in the Global South

Chapter Overview.…………………………………….……………... …….………...… 16 Introduction……………………………………….……………….……………………... 18 2. Approaches to Labor Precarity…………………………………………………..…….. 19 2.1.- Sociology of Work in the North and Precarity…………………………………….. 22 2.1.1.- Pierre Bourdieu: Domination and “Precarity”………………………… …. 22 2.1.2.- Robert Castel: Labor Precarity and Social Exclusion………….………...... 25 2.1.3.- Klaus Dörre: Labor Precarity as Critique of Capitalism…………..……… 28 2.1.4.- Richard Sennett: Labor Precarity and Character Corrosion………………. 32 2.1.5.- Guy Standing: Precarity and the Dangerous Class……….……………...... 35 2.2.- Approaches to Precarity in the South…….…………..…...………………………… 38 iv

2.2.1.- José Nun and Anibal Quijano: Thesis on Marginality……………….....…. 40 2.2.2.- Alejandro Portes: Thesis on Informality………………………….……….. 43 2.2.3.- Thesis on Social Exclusion………………………………….…………...... 45 2.3.- New Studies of labor precarity in the Global South……………………………...... 49 2.3.1.- Edward Webster & Karl Von Holdt: South Africa and Apartheid……..….. 50 2.3.2.- Ronaldo Munck: Precarity of the Global South……………..……….….... 56 2.3.3.- Ricardo Antúnez. Brazil and Social Precarization……………………...... 60 2.4.- Synthesis. A Multi-Dimensional Framework for Labor Precarity…………………... 64

Chapter Three. Precarity in Latin America

Chapter Overview ……………………………………………..…………………….…… 67 3.1.- Labor Precarity as Social Precarity………………….………….….…………...…… 71 3.2.- Significant Levels of Labor Precarity……………………………….………………. 75 3.3.- Precarity of Work and (Trans) Modernity…………….…………………………….. 77 3.4.- Precarity in Latin America: “A Model in the Making”……………….…… ……….. 82

PART III. CHILE AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF WORK. A QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS OF LABOR PRECARITY IN CHILE (1975-2010) …………………………………………………………………. 87 Introduction……………………………………………..……………………….……….. 88

Chapter Four. Chile: Neoliberalism and the Social Precarization Process

Chapter Overview………………………………...…………………..…………………… 91 4.1.- The New Accumulation Model….……..……………………………………………. 92 4.2.- Chile: A Paradigm of Labor Precarity………………….……………………………. 95 4.2.1.- Neoliberalism and State Reforms………………………………...….……………. 99 4.2.2.- The New Architecture of Work………………………………………….……….. 100

Chapter Five. Statistical History of the Dimensions of Labor Precarity

Chapter Overview…………...... 106 5.1.- Labor Precarity and Temporary Jobs…………………………………………….... 107 5.2.- De-Protection and Individualization of the Labor Relationship……………….…... 110

5.3.- Unemployment, Precarity and Exclusion from the Labor Market…………...... 113 5.4.- Precarious Remuneration…………………………………………………………... 117 5.5.- Working Conditions…………………………………………………..…..…..……. 122 5.6.- Revision. A Context of Precarity………………………………………….…....….. 124

Chapter Six. Trade Unions in Chile: Between Discipline and Fragility

Chapter Overview……………………………………………………………………………..….. 127 6.1.- Institutional Discipline………………………………………..…………….…….... 128 6.1.1.- Asymmetric Industrial Relations………………………………………..... 131 6.1.2.- Cancellation of Collective Action: Membership and Negotiation……….. 135 6.2.- A Heterogeneous, Precarious and Fragmented Unionism. Five Tendencies….……. 139 6.2.1.- Tendency I. Low Rates of Union Affiliation………………………….….. 140 6.2.2.- Tendency II. The Decline of Collective Bargaining……………………… 144 6.2.3.- Tendency III. Fragmented and Atomized. Territorial Realities...……...... 146 6.2.4.- Tendency IV. “Labor Unrest” and Consensus………………………….… 148 6.2.5.- Tendency V. Flexibility and Precarity……………………………….….... 152 6.3.- A Problematic Present for Unionism………………………………………………. 154

PART IV. UNIONISM IN CHILE (1975-2010)………………...……………..……… 155

Chapter Seven: Chronology of Trade Unions in Chile

Chapter Overview………………………………………………………………………. 156 7.1.- Unionism in the Period of the Popular Unity (UP) Government…….……….….... 158 7.2.- Unionism during the Military Dictatorship. 1973-1990…………………...…..…... 165 7.2.1.- Unionism under the New Regime (1973-1978)………………….…...….. 167 7.2.2.- Union Institutionalization and Reactivation (1979-1981) ...…………….. 173 7.2.3.- Resistance and Organic Reinforcement (1981-1990) …………....……… 179 7.3.- Chile in the 1990s: “Democratic Transition” and a New Union Model…….....…... 190 7.4.- Chile in the Twenty-First Century (2000-2010)………..…………………. ……… 203 7.4.1.- The “Socialist Government”: A New Workplace Issue?...... 203 7.4.2.- Fractures and Tensions. Decomposition of the Unitary Project.……....… 209 7.4.3.- New Outbreaks of Labor Disputes. …………………………………...…. 213 vi

7.5.- The Legacy of the Socialist Government……………………………….…….….... 219

PART V. METHODOLOGY AND ANALYSIS OF INTERVIEWS…………….….. 225

Introduction…………………………………………………………………………...… 226

Chapter Eight. Research Design and Method

Chapter Overview…………………………………………………………………….…. 228

8.1. Problem of the Investigation………………………………………………………... 229 8.2. Questions of the Investigation……………….……………………………………... 232 8.2.1. The Relevance of Precarity for Unionism (Q1)……..…………...... 232 8.2.2. Strategies and Repertoires to Challenge Labor Precarity (Q2)..……..….... 233 8.2.3. Problematic Cores for Unionism (Q3).….………………………………... 234 8.3. Instruments to Gather Information………………..………………………………… 235 8.4. The Selection of Interviewees.……..…………………………………………..…… 237 8.5. Analysis of the Interviews…………..………………………………………………. 241 8.5.1. Main Categories ...……..…….……………………………………...…..... 243 8.5.2. Analysis of Sub-Categories……...……………………………….……….. 250 8.5.3. Analysis of the Interviews……….………………………………………... 253 8.5.4. Transcription of the Interviews……….…………………………………... 253 8.5.5. Analysis Software………………….……………………………………... 254 8.6. Analyzing Voices and Problems……………………………………………………. 254

Chapter Nine. Analysis and Results

Chapter Overview……………………………………………………………………….. 256 9.1.- Dimensions of Labor Precarity……...………………………………………..……. 256 9.2.- Work Instability…………………………………………………………………..... 257 9.2.1.- Instability and Productive Heterogeneity………………………………... 258 9.2.2.- Instability and Atomization…………………………………..………….. 264 9.2.3.- Instability and the Vertical Organizational Logic of the Union….....,…... 268 9.2.4.- Disciplinary Instability and Institutionalization…………………….….... 271 9.2.5.- Instability and Defensive/Reactive Logics………………………………. 275 9.3.- Insecurity……….……………………………………………………………….…. 278

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9.3.1.- Insecurity and Atomization……………………………………..…….….. 279 9.3.2.- Insecurity and the Vertical Organizational Logic………...…………..…... 281 9.3.3.- Insecurity and Disciplinary Institutionality…………………………….… 284 9.3.4.- Insecurity and Predominance of a Defensive/Reactive Logic………...... 293 9.4.- Insufficiency…………………………………………………………………….…. 298 9.4.1.- Insufficiency and Segmentation……………………………..…………… 299 9.4.2.- Insufficiency and Atomization………………………………………….... 301 9.4.3.- Insufficiency and the Vertical Organizational Logic……..…………..….. 306 9.4.4.- Insufficiency and Disciplinary Institutionalization…………………..…... 310 9.5.-Working Conditions……………………………………………...……………..…... 319 9.5.1.- Working Conditions and Productive Heterogeneity………………….…... 320 9.5.2.- Working Conditions and Segmentation……………..………………….… 325 9.5.3.- Working Conditions and the Vertical Organizational Logic………….….. 331 9.5.4.- Working Conditions and The Defensive/Reactive Logic………….….….. 337 9.6. Summary of empirical findings………………………….………………….………. 343 9.6.1.- Changes at Work and Changes in Unions………………………………... 343 9.6.2.- Continuity and Disruption in Unionism………………………………….. 344 9.6.3.- Precarity and the Reinvestment of Self-Conceptions……………………. 346 9.6.4.- Labor Precarity, Heterogeneity and Union Activities…………………… 348 9.6.5.- The Crossroads of the Chilean Unions…………………………...……… 349

Chapter Ten. Conclusions

Cores and problems of Chilean unionism facing Labor Precarity…….…...……………. 352

Core I: Unionism and the Legacy of the Military Dictatorship….……………………… 353 Core II: The Relationship between the Political Parties and Unions…...…………….…. 354 Core III: Statements, Performances and Lack of Credibility…………..………………... 356 Core IV: Democracy and Union Unity..…………………………………………………. 358 Core V: The "New" Unionisms………..……………………………………………….... 360 Core VI: New Fragmented, Atomized but Worker-Related Subjectivities.……………... 361 Core VII: Legislation and the New Labor Code………………………………………… 363 Core VIII: Gender, Migration and Ethnicity………………...…………………………... 364 Core IV: Union Leaders and the Legacy of Political Parties from the Concertación.…... 366 Core X: Unionism between "The New" and "The Old"//past and present?………..……. 367 viii

References ………………………………………………………………………………. 369

Statistical Compendia...... 407

Appendix 1………………………………………………………………………………. 408

Appendix 2………………………………………………………………………………. 411

Appendix 3………………………………………………………………………………. 412

Ehrenwörtliche Erklärung………………………………………………………….……. 414

Lebenslauf……………………………………………………………………………….. 415

List of Tables

Table 1. Total union membership (1956 - 1973)…………………...……………………. 159

Table 2. Labor indicators in Chile during the period 1979-1989………………………... 176

Table 3. Labor indicators in Chile during the period 1990-1991………………….…..... 193

Table 4. Active existing unions, unionized workers and unionization rate (1985-2000).. 200

Table 5. Political composition of the Chilean labor movement (1992 – 2000)…………. 202

Table 6. Active existing unions, unionized workers and unionization rate (2001-2010).. 206

Table 7. Operationalization of dimensions, categories and sub-categories of the analysis of the interviews conducted with union leaders………………………………………….… 249

Acknowledgements

I am sincerely grateful and I owe my first thanks to my family. To my wife, Hilda, for believing in me, giving me strength and support. This project is possible thanks to her generosity, company and love.

I am profoundly indebted to my supervisor, Prof. Dr. Klaus Dörre. Thanks for his unconditional support, trust, friendship, insight, patience and guidance. My confidence as researcher has certainly improved because of his supervision and the results of this research would not have been possible without all the time and knowledge received from him.

I would like to sincerely thank the Friedrich-Schiller University Jena and the Institut für Soziologie for their academic support during my dissertation. I am grateful to Becas Chile (PhD Scholarship Program) and the National Council of Science and Technology (CONICYT) for the economic support necessary to develop this research for the last four years.

I am sincerely grateful to my colleagues in Germany and Chile for their support. Special thanks to Juan Miguel Chávez, Sandra Leiva, Osvaldo Blanco and Fernando Campos for their interest in my work and constant enthusiasm; Stefan Schmalz, Florian Butollo, Jan-Peter Herrmann and Loren Balhorn for the invaluable help in the German and English proofreading and comments on this work; Mauricio Ipinza for his friendship during my whole time in Germany; Marek Hoehn, Rafael Agacino, Estrella Díaz and Manuel Riesco for their very relevant comments on my writing and the interviews in 2011-2012; Claudia Cerda and Hernan Cuevas for helping me through the most difficult challenges in the last months of work; and Katia Molina for helping me gather the relevant information and for her always disinterested friendship.

I would like to thank each of the interviewees who participated in this research for their trust in us, as they shared their opinions, experiences, ideas, problems, expectations, hopes and their dreams related to the model that (hopefully) transcends precarious work and aids in confronting the challenges for the trade union movement in Chile.

Summary

This research seeks to explain changes in labor relations, the emergence of new forms of employment and the related effects on unionism in the period between 1975 and 2010 in Chile, taking into account the changes in the world of work, especially the phenomenon of labor precarity and the trajectories and emerging union strategies in this process.

In the present relation between labor precarity and organizations of union actors (stakeholders), we seek to relate the transformation of the labor conditions and the union activity in Chile. We assert that there is an adaptive heterogeneity and limited diversification of union strategies in the context of labor precarity in Chile, which is possible to prove and verify through the experience of union leaders from different companies and productive sectors of the country, and with view to the tendencies in indicators and labor statistics.

In order to contextualize this debate, in the first part of this research we analyze a theoretical construction of labor precarity, from the Latin American experience, problematizing its emergence in a productive, spatial and temporary context, in relation to an industrialized Europe where the discussion of labor precarity originally began. As synthesis we identify and define four dimensions of precarity (insufficiency, instability, working conditions and insecurity) as a typology of our study in the sociology of work.

Then, in the second part, we review the process of structural institutionalization of flexibility and labor precarity, aiming to more precisely identify the characteristics of the labor market and the production model. To achieve this goal, we include a descriptive level in the development of this research, with techniques for analyzing "secondary information", realizing, i.e. reviewing research, analysis and synthesis of theoretical and methodological positions, as well as the results obtained in various studies related to the issues discussed here. We also conducted an analysis of the main sources and statistical series relating to changes in the occupational structure, the labor market and working conditions in Chile, applying different statistical analysis techniques to identify, in this way, certain trends in the world of work and the labor market in Chile. We add to this a secondary analysis (review and

xii reinterpretation of data and information) of a variety of research findings focusisng on the study and definition of labor precarity, as well as on trends and changes in trade unionism in the period from 1975 to 2010.

We rely on a quantitative data analysis of secondary sources pertaining to the structural nature of precarity and the tendencies in organized labor (unionism) concerning membership, fragmentation and labor disputes. Complementing this analysis we review the trajectories and processes of labor precaritys, and the reorganization and action of unionism in the period between 1975 and 2010.

This particular relationship lends a different meaning to the term labor precarity, and to its codification on the part of the union movement. That is why we intend to focus on the permeability of the phenomena of labor precarity and labor flexibility in the discourses and strategies of different union leaders in the country, through the analysis of categories that we obtained from interviews with 22 union leaders in Chile.

We present the results of the case study, including an analysis of in-depth interviews conducted with union leaders in Chile. The process and consequences of internalizing precarious employment conditions – both for union action and as a result of it – are examined, as elements of a new appearance and direction of unionism, according to the identification of ten core problems of continuity and innovation that are present in our conclusions.

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Zusammenfasung (Summary in German)

Dieses Vorhaben möchte Veränderungen in den Arbeitsbeziehungen, das Entstehen neuer Formen von Beschäftigung und dessen Effekte auf die Gewerkschaftsbewegung im Zeitraum zwischen 1975 und 2000 in Chile erklären. Dabei werden die Veränderungen in der Arbeitswelt, insbesondere das Phänomen prekärer Arbeit und die aufkommenden gewerkschaftlichen Bewegungen und Strategien in diesem Prozess berücksichtigt.

Dabei sollen vor dem Hintergrund der Prekarität der Arbeit und der Organisation gewerkschaftlicher Akteure die Transformation der Arbeitsbedingungen und die gewerkschaftlichen Aktivitäten in Chile zueinander in Bezug gesetzt werden.

Es wird behauptet, dass es eine adaptive Heterogenität und begrenzte Diversifizierung gewerkschaftlicher Strategien im Kontext prekärer Arbeit in Chile gibt. Dies lässt sich durch die Erfahrung gewerkschaftlicher Führer in unterschiedlichen Unternehmen und verschiedenen Bereichen des produktiven Sektors des Landes ebenso belegen und verifizieren wie durch die in Statistiken ersichtlichen Trends.

Um diese Auseinandersetzung zu kontextualisieren, wird im ersten Teil der vorliegenden Forschung ein theoretisches Konstrukt prekärer Arbeit vor dem Hintergrund lateinamerikanischer Erfahrung erarbeitet, wobei seine Entstehung im produktivistischen, räumlichen und zeitlichen Kontext behandelt und in Bezug zum industrialisierten Europa gesetzt wird, wo die Diskussion der Arbeitsprekarität ursprünglich entstanden ist.

Als Synthese werden vier Dimensionen von Prekarität (Mangel/Insuffizienz, Instabilität, Arbeitsbedingungen und Unsicherheit) zur Systematisierung der Lektüre der Arbeitssoziologie identifiziert und definiert.

Anschließend wird im zweiten Teil der Prozess der strukturellen Institutionalisierung des Flexibilisierungsprozesses und der Prekarität von Arbeit überprüft, wobei die

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Charakteristika des Arbeitsmarktes und das Produktionsmodell in den Fokus gerückt werden. Um dieses Ziel zu erreichen, wird in dieser Phase der Forschung auf einer deskriptiven Ebene gearbeitet. Dabei werden die „Sekundärinformationen“, d.h. der Forschungsstand, analysiert sowie theoretische und methodologische Positionen analysiert und synthetisiert. Ebenso werden die in den unterschiedlichen Studien gewonnenen Erkenntnisse in Bezug zum hier diskutierten Thema gesetzt.

Außerdem wird eine Analyse der wichtigsten Quellen und statistischen Reihen bezüglich der Veränderungen in der Beschäftigungsstruktur, des Arbeitsmarktes und der Arbeitsbedingungen in Chile vorgenommen, wobei unterschiedliche statistische Analysetechniken zur Anwendung gelangen, um dadurch bestimmte Entwicklungen in der Arbeitswelt und auf dem chilenischen Arbeitsmarkt identifizieren zu können. Zu dieser Sekundäranalyse (Review und Neuinterpretation von Daten und Informationen) kommt eine Vielzahl an Forschungen, die auf die Erforschung und Definition von Arbeitsprekarisierung, Entwicklungen und Veränderungen in der Gewerkschaftsbewegung in der Zeit von 1975 bis 2010 fokussiert.

Das Hauptaugenmerk wird auf die Analyse quantitativer Daten und Sekundärquellen bezüglich der strukturellen Natur von Prekarität sowie auf die Tendenzen organisierter Arbeit (Gewerkschaftsbewegung) hinsichtlich Mitgliedschaft, Fragmentierung und Arbeitskonflikten gerichtet. Um diese Analyse abzuschließen, werden Entwicklungslinien und Prozesse der Prekarität von Arbeit und der gewerkschaftlichen Reorganisierung und Bewegung im Zeitraum von 1975 bis 2010 geprüft.

Dieses spezielle Verhältnis gibt der Prekarität der Arbeit und ihrer Chiffrierung auf Seiten der Gewerkschaftsbewegung einen neuen Inhalt. Hier wird der Versuch unternommen, auf die Durchlässigkeit des Phänomens der Prekarität von Arbeit und der Flexibilität in den Diskursen und den Strategien unterschiedlicher Gewerkschaftsführer des Landes zu fokussieren. Dies geschieht durch die Analyse der Kategorien, die sich aus den 22 Interviews mit den Gewerkschaftsführern in Chile ergeben haben.

Die Ergebnisse der Fallstudie – mit einer Analyse der Tiefeninterviews, die mit Gewerkschaftsführern in Chile geführt wurden – werden vorgestellt. Der Prozess und die Konsequenzen der Internalisierung der Prekarität der Arbeit werden an Hand der Gewerkschaftsaktivitäten – mit neuem Gesicht und neuer Richtung der Gewerkschaftsbewegung – untersucht, wobei die Identifikation von zehn Kernproblemen der Kontinuität und Innovation in die Schlussfolgerung einfließen.

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PART I: PRESENTATION AND INTRODUCTION TO OUR RESEARCH

Chapter One: Introduction

1.1.- Research Topic and Questions

The processes of productive restructuring (Sotelo 2003) and the imposition of the neoliberal model (Harvey 2007) were characterized by a systematic deregulation of labor relations, which itself was a cornerstone of the transformation process of the production model and the conversion of the accumulation pattern in Chile. This process had a significant impact on unionism, in terms of both their strategies as well as their structure and composition (Salinero 2006), resulting in a complex process of readjustment and articulation of subjectivities and identities at work in order to sustain sociability and collective action in the workplace.

Labor deregulation ultimately led to the phenomenon of labor precarity, which is a phenomenon that has impacted not only Chile and Latin America in recent decades, but indeed the entire globe (Munck 2013). As has been observed, the cumulated impacts of production transformations, trans-nationalization and globalization of the economy have escalated and manifested increasingly rapidly over the last decades (Harvey 2001; Wallerstein 2004).

This phenomenon was profoundly widespread throughout Europe. Many scientists from different perspectives assume that this tendency points towards a process of general erosion and degradation of employment conditions and the world of work as a whole (Offe 1985; Bourdieu 2001; Castel 1997; Beck 2000; Dörre 2009), which ultimately has direct implications for both the associative and collective action of workers as well as as for logic, proposal and resistance to vertical decisions which stem from these labor reforms (Moody 2001; Frege & Kelly 2004; Hyman 2006).

Thus, recent research suggests the existence of a process of reconfiguration of work identities in light of this phenomenon (Sennett 2002; Hyman 2006; Antúnez 2005) based on the intrinsic relationship between structure, subjectivity and collective action (De la Garza

2005), which is supported by abundant empirical material accounting for the emergence of a new working actor, and the contingency of the various forms of organization and protest that have been consolidated by workers in the last ten years in Latin America and the world (Moody, 2001). Yet, it seems there have been no long-standing observations accounting for the changes and transformations in the socio-historical scenarios which would allow us to analyze the dynamics, impact, tendencies and counter-tendencies organized around labor precarity, the “new” workers, and perspectives of workers’ organizations in this context of structural fragility of the labor scenario.

Our research seeks to explain changes in labor relations, the emergence of new forms of employment and its effects on unionism in the period between 1975 and 2010 in Chile, taking into account the changes in the world of work, especially the phenomenon of labor precarity, and the trajectories and emerging union strategies in this process. It is in this current tension between labor precarity and organization of union actors (stakeholders) that our principal research questions arise: How has the process of labor precarity modified, altered or rearranged union activity? Are new union strategies emerging in the context of labor precarity? Are we in a process of synchronization of labor precarity tendencies and the transformation of the world of work with new core problems for unions? In this study we assert that there is an adaptive heterogeneity and limited diversification of union strategies occurring in the context of labor precarity in Chile, which is possible to prove and verify based on the experience of union leaders from different companies and productive sectors of the country.

The difficulty of increasingly isolating the objects of study as national and regional approaches without reference to the global dimension which articulates today’s societies and states has in some manner influenced the treatment of “precarity”. Even so, in our case we intend to focus on a national level of analysis. Taking the the objections and problems involving this issue into consideration, not to mention the complex network of relations between “labor precarity” and collective action as in the case of Chile, constitutes an inescapable core of present labor relations. But we integrated a differentiation in capitalist

accumulation and its impact on the labor sphere in the context of Global South and the Global North.

Globally, there are currently several investigations addressing the issue of labor precarity and union movements which contain a diverse array of perspectives and diagnostics. While some diagnose the “crisis” in union movements (Zapata 2003) as an interlocking relationship between economic transformations and their relation to the political authorities and the State, labor deregulation, trade liberalization policies and privatization of the state productive system (Zapata 2004b; Harvey, 2007), others see - especially in the case of “immaterial labor” (Sherman & Shavit, 2013; Gill & Pratt, 2008; Vapollo 2005; Lazaratto & Negri 2001) and the case of the emerging configuration of a new and fragmented precarious labor subject - a new possibility of convergence and strengthening of trade unions (Moody 2001; Ross 2008; Lorey, 2012) in the newfound heterogeneity and diversity of forms in which work is expressed.

Although a series of studies confirms the phenomenon of labor precarity in different contexts (such as productive sectors, occupations, gender, etc.), there is no research linking the transformation of working conditions, the regulatory framework, the occupational structure and impacts on the adjustments of union strategies in Chile.

In our research we delve into the practical implications for the instruments of worker’s collective actions in terms of uncertainty and vulnerability, and the disciplinary implications of this fragmenting model of the world of work. Accordingly, in Part Three (Chapters Four and Five) we perform a statistical operationalization of the characteristics of a labor precarity model and the level of institutionalization thereof in Chile, like the framework where the unions transform their activity.

By accounting for the institutionalization of this flexibility and labor precarity process, we acknowledge that the space for the emergence of new subjectivities, identities and identifications at work are reconfigured, generating different types of behaviors relating to discipline, job prospects, labor exclusion phenomena, and therefore, a new “social issue” in

a highly polarized society in turn. Our first hypothesis proposes that these changes in the world of work have impacted unionism, in its morphology, its internal contradictions and its current decline. We developed this hypothesis through a quantitative data analysis focusing on five tendencies (fragmentation, low rates of union affiliation, the decline of collective bargaining, flexibility and precarity, and “labor unrest”) that we describe in Chapter Six, concerning unionism today in Chile.

From the contingency of this new scenario emerges our second hypothesis: the characteristics of continuity and disruption in unionism (that established precarious, atomized and individualized strategies in union action), has been opened to the generation of new phenomena that mark the development of unionism today. We elaborate this continuity and disruption from a historical perspective in the Chapter Seven, with an overview of the changes in unionism between 1975 and 2010.

In our research we consider the perspectives of organized nuclei of workers, under the figure of unionism, identifying the latter as associations that play a significant role in the institutionalized expression and representation of worker’s interest in the company, but which at the same time possess a contingent element in its language which is part of the mutability of adaption and changes in various historical periods.

We know that the production model has reconfigured and re-drawn work relations, but we find it interesting to ask: In relation to what it this reconfiguration? What is the origin of this redesign? Where is a structural and temporary comparison invoked in order to talk about degradation as a historical process? Our third hypothesis is related to this issue, noting that the debate on labor precarity is internalized by unions, as a reinvestment of self-conceptions and interpretations.

This phenomena is linked to the expectations of “old”, secure and stable work. These news interpretations can only be understood as a historical and socio-political problem, as a particular expression in each context (in this case Chile), where a strong deregulation of

work relations, the lack of protection against social risks and privatization of social services are important realities for the subject population.

This particular relationship gives a different content to expression of labor precarity, and to its codification on the part of the union movement. In that case we intend to focus on the openness to the phenomenon of labor precarity and flexibility in the speeches and strategies of union leaders in the country, through the analysis of categories that we have obtained from the interviews of 22 union leaders in Chile.

Furthermore, it is clear that in the way in which labor precarity is installed and permeates the world of work, labor precarity is directly related to the diversification of forms of employment, and complexity for workers in understanding the context of their rights, thereby laying the basis of their union activities and design proposals addressing the problematic effects of various dimensions of labor precarity in a new labor morphology (Antúnez 2003; 2011).

1.2.- Case Selection

In general terms there are three dimensions and/or selection criteria of this research that make the construction of its object of study particular.

1.2.1.- Labor Precarity in Latin America.

The peculiarity of the situation in Latin America is that it stands at the intersection of the dependency ratio and “underdevelopment” (Marini 1971; Fernándes 1979) and the role the foreign capital assumed in Latin America by openly extracting a significant portion of the surplus that is generated within each national economy. Moreover, in recent decades it has been marked by the passage from a development model focused on import substitution to a neoliberal model of economic trans-nationalization (Ramos 2000; Reinhardt & Peres 2000; Guillén 2007), which established new practices that strengthened the logic of dependency via trade liberalization, dismantling of the state apparatus, the neo-extractivism of economies, privatization of companies, trade liberalization, labor and financial deregulation

– all of which marginalized the role of workers in the process of production control and weakened its power as actor in political-economic decision-making.

In addition, phenomena such as outsourcing and subcontracting (Caamaño, 2007); a segmented, decentralized and fragmented production structure in small enterprises (Ramos 2000, Salinero, 2002); the territorial transfer of the previous organization’s nuclei of workers (Díaz, 1995, Zapata, 2004); the informal structure of employment (Tokman, 2001, Portes & Hoffman, 2003) and open employment (Weller, 2011) are structural phenomena that have undermined the practice of unionism in Latin America (Zapata, 2003).

In the case of Chile, all these phenomena impacted the shaping of the labor market (in which unionism participated in from a very marginal position), by defining institutional frameworks in the process of trans-nationalization that sought to maximize labor flexibility in all its forms1, establishing contract conditions and generic grounds for dismissal which were based “in the hope that businesses create jobs without intensive investments in workmanship adversely impact on competitiveness” (Zapata, 2004: 10).

1.2.2.- Chile: Paradigmatic Case for the Institutionalization of Labor Precarity.

In Chile, the labor market was abandoned by the State, left to the will of corporate interests and a growth model based on investment and transnational capital, as part of a labor law that promoted a system of asymmetric labor relations which excluded all aspects that may affect labor costs from collective bargaining (vertical and horizontal mobility, dismissals and contracting, financial aspects of the operation of enterprises), while wages were maintained, regardless of productivity increases, which is in turn part of the strategy of labor deregulation and a new extensive regime of job exploitation.

These transformations became dominant in spaces that transgressed the work space and restructured the world of work, as an axis, through the changes introduced in the wage society via neoliberal economic restructuring (Salazar 2003). The unleashing of the free

1 See Goudwaard & Nanteuil-Miribel (2000) and the four forms of flexibility: a) temporary or financial; b) numerical or contractual; c) productive or geographical; and d) functional or organizational.

market brought greater poverty and social inequality in Chile (Espinoza, Barozet & Méndez 2010). Both youngest and older workers were excluded from minimum wage benefits (French-Davis & Raczynski 1987, Mac-Clure 1994); a policy of automatic adjustment of wages was held until 19832, a process of push salaried workers into the informal sector and new contexts of poverty were radicalized, etc. (Tokman 2001). Those who managed to find work saw their real wages cut in half, unemployment rates that rose to 15% in 15 years, unions banned until 1979, the imposition of a labor reform in 1979, and the pension system handed to the capitalization of private companies (Riesco 1989; Mac-Clure 1994; Moulián 2001).

Thus, the case of Chile represents an exemplary space to analyze the consequences of the introduction of policies of deregulation and labor flexibility for the social structure, and especially, for the organization of workers, their role in the world of work and the formulation/diversification of union strategies. Its selection as the object of analysis is based on the complexity of the socio-historical experience that has redefined the relationship and composition of unionism as an actor (stakeholder) in the last three decades. This experience has been characterized, on the one hand, by the introduction of neoliberalism as a privatization model of the economy and as a model of social discipline, and moreover, by a multidimensional state policy, which has articulated the world of work from the centrality of tendencies and reforms aimed at labor precarity and labor flexibility.

1.2.3.- Unions as Object of Labor Precarity

The aforementioned set of facts has seriously impacted the structure, composition, and size of and unionism, as well as their actions in Chile. The installation of these policies also meant a strict definition of a model of labor precarity, and an intrinsic relation to fragmentation and weakening of unions. Therefore, the space of labor relations went from an area disputed between the actors of the world of work to a space of strict corporate domination and hegemony. Companies used highly offensive, innovative and preemptive strategies in relation to management and work organization, including extreme labor

2 Díaz (1989: 17) states that “minimum wages are still being readjusted in a spaced manner, so between 1981 and 1989 average wages were left behind”.

precarity via highly inequitable subcontracting structural chains, where rather than the technological specialization or qualification of subcontractors, primary skills and precarious employment dominate (Abramo, Montero & Reinecke 1997; Guadamarra, Hualde & Silva 2012).

Unionism has undergone a transformation in its institutionalism. After having a centralized and nationwide nature, it went on to be decentralized at company levels so as to allow a more direct representation of workers, but with significant loss of power in negotiations and worker representation. Legislation operated and operates in a way to weaken its organization and collective action, especially in the cases of strikes and collective bargaining (negotiating); while the defensive strategy of the union leader is torn between managerial persecution, institutional weakness, labor precarity and the difficulties of obtaining “efficient” results for strengthening the association; surveillance logics and penalties for union membership limit the inclusion of new members to the organization.

In summary, the changes occurred in organizational strategies and guidelines of Chilean unionism can only be observed and understood from the perspective of labor precarity, accounting for the effects of the labor market, policies on labor law and corporate behavior from the perspective of union members. For this same reason we consider the experience, diagnostic and knowledge of the union’s leaders in relation to the phenomena of labor precarity for his or her role in collective action and response to this problem in the labor relations.

Questions about how unions decay and reassemble, taking on new morphologies in the field of a segmented, precarious and unregulated labor market, shows the need to think about the difficulties and structural foundations required by a labor relation model to promote social welfare.

The importance of the selection of unionism as an actor (stakeholder) in this subject also relates to an orientation of the research that observes in the articulation of organized

collective action the possibility of a counter-tendency to the structural valorization of labor precarity, whereby union actors becomes a strategic factor in this subject.

1.2.4.- Summary of Research Proposal

This is how we summarize the rationale of our research according to the relevance we identified in the structural features that come with labor precarity as a constitutive and central element of social relations. Labor precarity plays a significance role particularly in Global South (Sur Global) contexts and is critical to an understanding of the present and future of union organizations in neoliberal regimes, as in the case of Chile.

The central role granted to the vision of unions in this research refers to the importance that is associated with these organizations in valorization of job processes, improving working conditions and wages, and generating collective pressure for welfare policies. This is a core in both the sociological concept of “labor precarity”, as precarious work relations must interact in the space of its actors to give more consistency to the study of practical and dialectical phenomenon of labor precarity.

1.3.- Research Thesis

In this research we are working with different hypotheses related to the chronological structure of this work.

In the case of our first hypothesis concerning the changes in the world of work and their impact on union activities, we focus our research from the approach that understands Precarity as a particular phenomenon according to each spatial and temporary context. Furthermore, precarity is assumed and internalized in a different manner by the actors of the world of work in a particular social formation, which makes the phenomenon a space for the exploration of identities.

The viability of this hypothesis is investigated in the first part with a review of the principal references in the study and definition of labor precarity, while taking into consideration the historical debate in Latin America around marginality, informality and social exclusion.

We focus on the idea that the transformation of global capitalism has its historical origin in the development of the peripheral societies and of the Global South, and that precarity is a historical relation and mediation between capital and work. In that case precarity represents a continuity of “old debates” reintroduced in a new circle of changes in every spatial context, that in Latin America has a expression, not just in labor, but also in the social reproduction sphere.

Our second hypothesis is that the institutionalization of the process of flexibility and labor precarity has set a new morphology of the world of work, and a new configuration for collective action. In this point we search for changes in the principal labor statistics in Chile, and focus on relating them to tendencies within unionism in the last three decades.

We can observe changes in the composition of work and in new phenomena like temporary employment, deregulation of labor laws, low salaries, etc., and principally in the relation of this process to the dimensions of labor precarity (instability, insufficiency, working conditions and insecurity), and how this process involves the institutional and political participation of unions in a system of labor politics created, in the case of Chile, with the objective of disciplining the collective action of workers.

In this context between discipline, fragility and the new possibilities for the unions organizations, we ground our third hypothesis that Labor precarity becomes a reorganizing element for union strategies. This situation is linked to an institutionalized set of practices of labor precariousness, that influences and support, in different ways, his coactive and disciplinary power against unions.

1.4.- Structure of the Presentation

In our research we have focused on the process of labor precarity in the last 30 years in Chile, taking contemporary union leaders as research subjects. We focus on the leaders due to the duality of their precarious condition, which moves between security, insecurity, corporate persecution and collective organization.

From this perspective, we support the development of this research, at the descriptive level, with analysis techniques of “secondary information”, i.e., conducting a literature review; analysis and synthesis of existing theoretical/methodological positions as well as the results achieved in different studies related to the topics discussed herein. We also conducted an analysis of the main sources and statistical series concerning changes in Chile's occupational structure, labor market and working conditions, applying different statistical analysis techniques to verify the level of statistical validity of certain tendencies in the world of work and the labor market in Chile. We add to this a secondary analysis (revision and reinterpretation of data and information) from a swathe of research focused on the study and definition of labor precarity and changing tendencies in unionism in the period between 1975 and 2010 (Chapter Six).

We conducted a characterization of the productive structure through the use of statistical sources to account for a number of job and work characteristics in Chile around working conditions, assessing the structural nature of labor precarity (Chapter Four and Five). This analysis is supported by a characterization of union collective action in the period between 1975-2010, accounting for the relationship of articulation between social structure and collective actor, based on a secondary revision of studies and research in the field (Chapter Seven).

Moreover, and to complement this research proposal (Chapter Eight and Nine), we propose a qualitative approach to account for the peculiarities of the permeability of labor precarity in the speeches of union leaders. We understand that

“qualitative research is a social science about other people in their own social setting, whereas cooperative inquiry is a wide-ranging science about any aspect of the human condition that a Group of co-researchers choose to explore through the instrumentality of their own experience” (Heron & Reason 1997: 286).

Our qualitative primary information collection technique was focused on conducting in- depth interviews of 22 union leaders from different productive sectors of the country. In- depth interviews are characterized by “being conducted between an interviewer and an informant in order to obtain information about life in general, or about a topic, process or specific experience of a person. Through in-depth interviews, the interviewer seeks to learn what is important and meaningful to the interviewee (respondent); come to understand how he/she see, classifies and interprets his/her world in general or some area or topic of interest (Selltiz; Wrightsman; Cook 1980; Cuba & Lincoln 1994).

We focus on the speech analysis orientation to correlate: a) the conditions of labor precarity; b) the heterogeneity of the concept of work; c) corporate behavior; d) perceptions of the institutional and legal framework; and e) practices and meanings of union collective action today. Thus we aim to reconstruct the perceptions of union leaders in relation to the depreciation of the labor model, as elaborated through quantitative data analysis techniques, allowing contrast, illustration and a qualitative deepening the analysis already generated.

The method and the structure of our research allows us to generate a characterization of the prospects unions face on the subject of working conditions (“decent” and “dignified”) in reference to a reinvention and innovation of its strategies, and a contrast with the theory of labor precarity in the case of Chile.

Still, this research does not focus on a finished study about the subjectivity of workers in relation to the consequences of the phenomena of labor precarity. We developed a first approach to this problem in the recomposition and construction of meaning in the levels of resistance to the precarization process considering different experiences and repertories of organized workers in Chile.

Thus considered in this research we do not address the qualitative experience of workers outside of unions or in another organization, as we concentrate our efforts on integrating the dimension of organized workers and the results of "defense" against labor precarization. This gives us more possibilities to understand the dynamic character of precarity in the plane of meanings and collective action today.

PART II. THEORETICAL APPROACHES TO PRECARIOUSNES

Chapter Two: Labor Precarity Perspectives in the North and in the Global South.

Chapter Overview

It is becoming increasingly common to find the concept of “precarity” in different contexts and references in the field of the social sciences. Wrapped in various discursive formations, contradictory meaning for the same phenomena (Castel 1997; Beck & Beck-Gernsheim, 2002): appeals to address a particular situation, or as a way to introduce a negative “precarious brand” (Butler 2004), as a condition of “inequity”, etc. (Therborn 2008) - the concept of “precarity” acquires an explanatory, descriptive and phenomenological dimension that has established itself in the literature and analysis of the sociology of work and social sciences (Castel 1997; Dörre 2009; Kalleberg 2011; Lee & Kofman 2012), generating new debates concerning its characterization, latency and connection in various economic, social, cultural and political contexts (Ross 2008).

The truth is that its overuse as a concept has placed the study of precarity into an ongoing review of itself (Neilson & Rossiter 2008) and questions about its sociological and political status. The questions that have surfaced, after three decades of precarity debate, happen to be thoughtful when placed in the current context of social relations: What is precarity? Is it a “new” form of discipline? Is it a “new” form of control? Does this distinction exist in terms of sociological definitions of work and social theory? Or is it just a new and enticing concept that comes to fill the epistemic deficiencies in social sciences, and especially in the sociology of work?

In attempting to answer these questions, perhaps one of the first impressions that seem to relate to the concept or precarity is the notion of “lack”, of incompleteness, of the existence of a gap regarding “something”, a condition, and a concrete practice of “suffering” associated with a concrete social-historical and cultural condition (Berlant 1999).

Labor precarity seems to be the synthesis of a series of practices related to “suffering-from- lack-of-something”, for example, stable working conditions, adequate and permanent wages, employment and dismissal protection, etc., which tie in and emerge in a historical- discursive plane that “names its absence”, as part of a process of degradation of the status of employment, but also the simultaneous identification of the “suffering” by a subject-of- precarity in its materiality.

This core problematic has been the focus of European theoretical production with regard to the phenomenon of precarity (Castel 1997; 2010; Baumann 1998; Beck & Beck- Gernsheim, 2002 Dörre 2009; 2010), and it seems to have created a doxa that the “name” precarity has permeated the analysis of labor precarity in Latin America, and has left a critical gap in the conceptualization as a spatial, temporary and socio-historical process. This is why in attempting to answer our initial questions, new ones immediately arise: How does this “suffering” expand its frames of meaning from the social to the labor field? Where is the resourcefulness of this process located? Where are the roots of this concept? and What is its relevance to today’s “suffering” in a society such as Latin America?

Introduction

Perspectives in the sociology of work in Latin America are beginning to develop their approaches to the phenomenon of labor precarity. The last Latin American Congress of Labor Studies (ALAST 2013, after its acronym in Spanish) proposed a working group (GT06) dedicated solely to the topic of “Outsourcing and organizing precarious workers”3, which implies coordination between the precarious condition, subjects of precarity, its emerging organization and scientific work of social work researchers in Latin America.

This ceases to be just a novelty or part of a random event. The condition of precarity is intrinsically associated with the sociological conceptsof uncertainty, precarity, vulnerability, i.e., the various aspects and dimensions of labor precarity, which seem to have become a worldwide tendency in the rearrangement of workspaces and productive restructuring since the 1980. Moreover, the incorporation of precarity as a space capable of organizing subjects demonstrates, on the one hand, changes in the socio-productive matrix in Latin America, together with the apparent permeability and internalization of scientific debates and work studies for this new scenario of work symbolization and flexibility of employment relations4, and on the other hand, a claim and connotation to the constituent processes of resistance, collectivities and mobilization in the and from the workspace.

These mutations, at the level of symbolic order of work, clearly imply a challenge for the social science of work in Latin America, which consists mainly of accounting for the specific changes in the subjectivity of the labor force in its relationship between subjectivity, culture and structure (De la Garza 2001), which – integrated into new productive paradigms (in terms of changes in the labor process and work reorganization) -

3 In this Congress we presented the essay “Mapping for the study of precarious identities at work”, which was approved by the Latin American Association of Labor Studies - ALAST (for its acronym is Spanish) in the VII Latin American Congress of Labor Studies. Work in the XXI Century. Changes, impacts and perspectives. 2-5, July 2013, in the city of Sao Paulo, Brazil.

4 Needless to say, the subcontracting relation includes a flexible link in employment relationships, which does not involve and excludes any and all workers in conditions of job precarity in a model dominated by informality as the Latin American. Here is necessary the distinction between precarious employment (wage-dependent link) and precarious work (as the heterogeneity of relationships and activities of social production and reproduction related to the activity of producing, either tangible goods or intangible services).

has shaped new conditions of production and the establishment of productive experiences, as well as the process of organizing “the senses at work” (Antúnez 2005), which in turn is problematic for a critical perspective and a methodology based on action-research. The study of this “new” alignment may only be carried out under the precondition of accounting for: a) the senses and work cultures that transcend standardization models of precarity (from a statistical perspective); and b) the diversity of socio-historical experiences and expressions of work.

For other side, we face some ideological overused, iterability and cacophonous relationship connotations that impregnate the concept of “precarity” (in particular in its work and labor connotation). This situation remain as one of the tasks set forth in order to unravel its potential and limitations in the construction of senses, its practical implications, and traits, brands and identification springs that are present in the process of formation of precariousness today, as part of a process of politicization of the workspace, which requires an epistemological transparency and socio-historical explanation of the precariousness condition (relational).

2. Approaches to Labor Precarity in the North

As a result of the crisis of Fordism affecting industrial companies and corporations in the second half of the last century (Offe 1985)5, the main form taken by capital accumulation was based on the flexibilization and casualization of the workforce. This revitalized the effectiveness of capitalist laws (laws of value, surplus value and the rate of profit on specific processes of accumulation and reproduction of capital on a global scale) and promoted the concentration and centralization of capital and of social wealth (Katz 2012). Thus, “the restructuration of labor and capital were the actual supports of the recent history of the formation process of globalization” (Sotelo 2003: 16).

5 “The postwar model was based in the central countries on a sustained increase in productivity (which allowed simultaneous increases in real wages and corporate benefits) and, internationally, the dollar gaining strength. When productivity stagnated and the international postwar model ceased to be sustainable, the model underwent a crisis” (Sánchez. 2009:135).

With the globalization of markets (capital and finance, technology, consumer, etc.) and the imperialist powers through their various economic bodies and the triad of liberalization, privatization and deregulation, the consequent withdrawal of the Welfare State and the actions of a social state in a flexible capitalism (Lessenich 2008). In this process a debate regarding the precarity of working conditions as were consolidated in the Europe of the 80’s, which had as main tendencies the fragmentation, individualization and disaffiliation from work began (Offe 1997; Castel 1997; Görz 1997).

“Precarity” is defined in this context as a “condition”, an emerging and breakthrough phenomenon, a way of living and being in the world linked to the loss and/or weakening of social bonds of integration and social protection that supported the Fordist social compromise. In this direction the concept of labor precarity tends to be associated with the deterioration of working conditions, to a condition of employment precarity and/or labor precarity; a place in the social space in which the worker is left unprotected against the expansion of non-formal relationships, where laws do not protect them, the consolidation of a space of vulnerability, the absence of the right of union affiliation or participation, etc.

Labor precarity is comprehensible only in its complexity as a symptom of the changes and mutations in the dynamic and interior pattern of capitalist accumulation, and as part of a response of capital to its own crisis (Antúnez 2005; Harvey 2007). As part of this process “capital triggered several changes in the production process itself, through the establishment of forms of flexible accumulation, of downsizing, forms of organizational management, technological advances, alternative models to the binomial Taylorism- Fordism, among which “Toyotism” or the Japanese model stresses out” (Antúnez 2005: 33).

Currently, the expression of this process in the North would be marked by: a) reengineering and restructuring production processes; b) the process of neo-liberalization, along with its consequences on a global scale (Harvey 2007); c) the transformation of models of work regulation, with the consequent blurring of the links associated with the

insertion and social integration (Aglietta 1979; Castel 2010); and d) in the process of territorial and symbolic expansion of accumulation (Dörre 2011a).

This situation becomes at the same time paradoxical, given the consequent erosion and labor precarity, as well as the strategic importance that social precarity entails today in capitalist societies. At the same time, this phenomenon provokes an important debate about the centrality of work in social theory (Rifkin 1995; Offe 1985; Gorz 1982; 1997; Dejours & Deranty 2010).

In this new scenario of accumulation and profit, “the society of capital and its law of value need less and less stable work and more and more diversified forms of part-time work, outsourced work, which are in an increasing scale, a constituent part of the process of capitalist production” (Antúnez 1999: 51). Furthermore, “the reduction of living labor and enlargement of dead labor”, or what Juan José Castillo would call “organizational lyophilization” (Castillo 1996), as phenomena related to this labor mutation, continues to be one of the phenomena that characterizes the current accumulation model – computerization, mechanization and automation -,

“precisely because capital cannot eliminate the living labor of the process creating value, it must increase utilization and work productivity, so as to enhance extraction forms of overwork in an increasingly short time” (Antúnez 2005: 109).

Under the framework of financial-capitalism (Dörre 2009b) it seems that the centrality of financial capital is still relative, since “on the one hand it shows that most of the wealth is created speculatively, that for work it is “expendable”, but at the same time, it could not be possible without the sector of material and immaterial production and productive circulation, and in this sector, it is essential to satisfy human needs and even for the enjoyment of speculative profits, work remains very important (De la Garza 2001).

This phenomenon, the lack of social protection, leaves the relationship between capital- labor in a state of extensive deregulation, coupled with a strong structural asymmetry,

based in conditions of de-protection, unemployment and vulnerability, turning work into a deeply disciplinary practice (Deranty 2008). The scope of this phenomenon does not distinguish the size of production units “as in modern productive sectors and even in new activities linked to the export of new tradable products”. Precarity constitutes the dynamic axis of the new pattern of accumulation” (Mora 2005: 29).

The issue is that the precarity of employment, within the framework of the salary system, casualization of labor or labor precarity is being advanced, manifest in the emergence of different forms of employment (atypical, informal, etc.). In this context it is difficult to maintain the thesis of the centrality of a wage (salary) society, because these fragile links to an existing mechanism of integration are reproduced and convey the changes in other areas of production.

2.1.- Sociology of Work in the North and Precarity

European sociology of work is certainly concentrated on the dynamics and changes in work (Dubar, 2002; Dejours & Derantry, 2010). Its internal and external logics of validation find new forms of subjectivity and identities which are pierced by the phenomenon of “transition from a marginal precarity to a discriminatory precarity” (Dörre 2010: 84), from migration, gender and a large group of youth unemployed, entailing an expansion of the labor precarity phenomenon as a relation of articulation and characterization of the working world, and a decentralization of stability, security and cooperation in work (Sennett 1998; 2006; Castel 1997; 2011; Castel & Dörre 2009; Dörre 2010), within the framework of decomposition and erosion of an social protection project and a model of reproduction of capitalism in Northern societies (Amin 2010; Dörre 2012).

2.1.1.- Pierre Bourdieu: Domination and “Precarity”

As stated by Bourdieu (1999: 125-126), “labor precarity is inscribed as a form of domination based on the institutionalization of a generalized and permanent state of precarity which tends to force workers to submission and to the acceptance of exploitation”.

The effect of this symbolic power directs workers into inaction, disciplining and a permanent sense of uncertainty.

Bourdieu denoted the neologism flexploitation which synthesizes a rationalized form of labor precarity management with the form acquired by submission to the system and annulment of collective solidarities and references in the work place.

This new framework of relations of precarity at work is accompanied by a global context of migration and relocation of productivity, which is why labor precarity becomes a fundamental element in the construction of racist and xenophobic discoure(s) within the working class, and in a behavior of radicalization of competition between workers. Also, labor precarity is accompanied by a group of euphemistic discourses regarding the “scientific justification” of exploitation (such as labor flexibility, deregulation, opening and freedom of markets, free circulation of capitals, reduction of the State’s deficit, etc.), all of which constitute the project of neo-liberalism as a methodical plan of destruction of the collective with which solidarities have been undermined by means of the establishment of a dual economy (one of well paid workers who exploit themselves and one of disposable workers) and the exercise of a political regime “that can only be instated with the active or passive complicity of the directly political powers” (Bourdieu 1999: 126).

The conclusion of Bourdieu’s work is that

“labor precarity acts directly on those who suffer it (and those who are incapacitated to move by it) and indirectly on the rest of us because of the fear provoked by it and that methodically exploit the labor precarity strategies, such as introduction of the famous “flexibility” which is evidently inspired by political and economic reasons. Thus we begin to suspect that labor precarity is not a product of an economic calamity but of a political will. The “flexible” company deliberately exploits an precarity situation that contributes to reinforce: it intends to reduce its costs but also to undertake such reduction placing the worker in a permanent risk of losing his job” (Bourdieu 1999: 122 - 123).

Entrepreneurs use the weapon of precarity to impose risky and tense situations on workers. Precarity, as such, became a key principle of work organization, finding “the complicity of precarity habits that produce precarity and not having disposed of all levels of hierarchy, without excluding the highest levels, especially between the middle management positions, of an army of manpower reserve tamed by labor precarity and by permanent threat of unemployment” (Bourdieu 1999: 141).

The conclusion appears tragic: when work relations are founded in institutionalization of precarity through work agreements even more particularized and adjusted to the employer’s demands with “rational subjection techniques that impose super-implication at work” (Bourdieu 1999: 140) with almost null perspectives for promotion and draconian evaluation measures, then the groups of work are weakened, abolished, while atomization of workers increase.

However, Bourdieu’s proposal also identifies in this process the “political struggle” as antagonist to the political regime’s interests; a struggle that can “propose itself as an initial purpose… stimulate exploitation victims -all present and potential instabilities- to work jointly against the destructive effects of labor precarity (helping them to live, to “hang on” and hold back, to save their dignity, to resist disintegration, degradation of the reflection and alienation) and above all, to mobilize in an international scale” (Bourdieu 1999: 127).

The proposal that Bourdieu observes for the labor precarity phenomenon and its extension in this “dual society” compels workers to a “redistribution of work… redistribution inseparable of a redefinition of distribution between time of production and time of reproduction, rest and leisure” (Bourdieu 1999: 127), which is the reason why labor precarity also implies a new conflict for the constitution of the workers’ actions and their organizations.

2.1.2.- Robert Castel: Labor Precarity and Social Exclusion

According to Castel (2010: 14) “it may be said that history of civilizations has been to a large extent an effort to establish rules, protections, a social order impeding that men confront or conflict permanently”. For decades the work of States in industrialized economies has been characterized by the effort to assure certain margins of risk management and lack of protection of their citizens, consolidating an institutionalization in protection public-social policy.

Intervention by the State, particularly in social law, inaugurating what Castel (2003) refers to as “insuring societies” which although not composed by equals, are nevertheless composed by fellowmen, constitutes a central part of the role that States tried to undertake as part of a social protection strategy (Castel 2002), heir of the social commitment of the industrial capitalism6 (Castel 2010).

In a relational dynamic approach Castel (2007: 18) states that employment was “the outcome of a long series of struggles and conflicts, workers had certain protection through their participation in collective organization forms; for work, collective conventions, collective regulations regarding the right to work and the right to social protection guaranteed by the State, which is the instance of the collective by excellence. It may be said, I believe, that the collective protects or is used to protect the workers”.

To our understanding this analysis has important political consequences on the way we understand labor precarity, given the fact that this social protection model which has constituted a “determinant factor that guarantees the cohesion of a society and the solidarity

6 We shall understand by “Fordist social industrial commitment” in which the word “commitment” must not evocate a weak consensus where social actors would exchange courtesies… From the side of capital, production relations remain unchangeable, salary work was not abolished but on the contrary it extends and installs and remains as a subordination relationship that the working world is forced to accept. However, from the side of this working world, salary condition has been consolidated and in the future is surrounded and pierced by protections. It can also be said that the salaried worker does not work exclusively for his employer because a part of his activities’ results (“the indirect salary”) returns to him in order to finance his own security” (Castel 2010b: 21).

of its members” (Castel 2010b: 14) entered into crisis in the 80s in Europe, initiating an intense debate on the changes and transformations of the working world in industrialized societies, as well as a debate on political regimes and responsibility of the State with regard to its citizens.

Flexibility and labor precarity were imposed as a part of the “salary condition commotion” in the industrial capitalism societies during the 80s (Castel 2007), which was marked by the socio-technical innovation of the reorganization of working logics and productive adjustment and restructuring policies. It is possible to identify a clear rupture in this process with regard to the previous social division of work, a scientific-technological revolution in the production resources, the deregulation of work and a massive disassociation of the individuals of the protection systems characteristic of the State of Welfare (Castel, 1997).

In this complex process Robert Castel (1997) identifies labor precarity as “a job without labor or social guaranties” extending the problem to a “new social question”, to a “second class citizenship”, in terms of political, civil, laboring rights and the forms of social integration. In this process the asymmetric form taken by the relationship between capital- work allowed the capitalist class a broad margin to re-found the bases of the accumulation process in the exploitation of labor, generating the guidelines for competitiveness and comparative advantages that capital required for its displacement and increased mobility with the objective of generating a new expansion cycle, which introduced the formation of significant zones of social vulnerability and disaffiliation in the periphery, as well as an accelerated decomposition process of the security in the North.

That is how the emergence of the labor precarity forms in contexts where social security had priority, security that have constituted “a collective remedy against adversity enabled by the aversion to risk, modern citizens “accepted” to reduce their earnings in favor of the possibility of having to face greater expenses in the future (Castel 2010: 15), generated the bases of a new social contract of precariat7 where the effect of a discrepancy between

7 We approach this notion from what Hoehn (2009; 6) called the anthropological vision of neoliberalism, where “stability of this ‘spontaneous order’ depends on submission under certain cultural norms of

social expectations around mobility, promotion, protection and the effective capacities of a society to make it work are installed: a new mindset, a “modern” product of the neo-liberal hegemony in emergence.

Castel (1997; 2002) understands by this process how the construction of the “social question” is displaced directly from the integration links provided by work to its problematization through the precarious characteristics used to create a scenario of social exclusion, based on two phenomena: 1) an exclusion from the labor market and 2) a social exclusion derived from labor conditions, in which unemployment and sub-employment as structural phenomena are emphasized8. The State becomes the manager of both the market as well as modernization problems.

That is where a dismantling process of the employment status is spatially installed (Castel 2002; 2011), in which “besides unemployment; besides the periods of alternation between employment and unemployment, we have a multiplication of definite contracts such as contracts subject to term, outsourcing and partial work. This is what we call atypical forms of employment” (Castel 2010: 32).

Among its characteristics is the installment of a “short term regime” which generates an abstract and mercantile form of control of perpetuation of competitiveness inside companies and among its employees. Here we can find one of the most essential causes for labor precarity as a process of loss, degradation and social reorganization (Dörre 2012).

behavior that frame the space for individual behavior: private property, contractual freedom, formal equality before the law, honesty and austerity”.

8 In this direction the concern by state policies in labor matters of ensuring a “decent job” or a “dignifying job” (Ghiotto & Pascual 2010) is not consistent with the changes supported in the deregulation of labor relations in the past decades and in the bases of the salary regime of the neo-liberal production model, but instead it consolidated a social exclusion and exclusion from the labor market regime itself. In this model the state plays a role of “concentrating in generating acceptance for the reduction of wedges, reduction of life standards and remnant unemployment. The means to achieve this goal include more restrictive statistic criteria to measure unemployment or its open falsification if necessary to generate uncritically acceptance of the dominant (hegemonic) ideological speech, and the emphasis of extra economic values such as family, homeland, etc”.(Hoehn 2009: 2-3).

2.1.3.- Klaus Dörre. Labor Precarity as Critique of Capitalism

According to Klaus Dörre (2009; 2010; 2011), financial capitalism and precarity are two sides of the same coin, considering that precarity of shareholders and investors’ profits directly and inevitably generate precarity on the level of labor relations.

Labor precarity involves a process of work subjectification. For Klaus Dörre (2009: 87 – 88), as well as for Boltanski & Chiapello (2006: 55),

“… the ideological engine of this colonization is a “New spirit of capitalization” which defines freedom in a negative way; meaning, the absence of coercion, and which seeks to legitimize the financial capitalist restructuration as a liberating process by means of categories such as auto-determination and responsibility”.

Labor precarity “has passed through history because the production forms were radically transformed, as the structural materialization conditions of insecurity in labor” (Dörre 2009: 84). For Dörre the main cause of this transformation is constituted by “colonization undertaken by financial capitalism initiated in the seventies” as a

“particular capitalist formation which combines a model of capital accumulation based on a relative predominance of liquid capital and flexible mercantile production models with regulation devices (linking public speeches with institutional practices) which prioritize adaptation to the market logic, competitiveness and individuality before the solidarity principle” (Dörre 2009: 84).

In this new context a “short term regime which generates an abstract and mercantile form of control of perpetuation of competitiveness inside companies and among its employees” is imposed, and where “factors such as salaries, working days and work conditions have transformed into meaningless variables, having these latter to flexibly adapt to the market’s demand” (Dörre 2009: 85 – 86).

In this process “precarity hits those non-qualified and poorly remunerated works hard, many times in the area of services rendered to people (paramedics, senior citizens’ care), in gastronomy and tourism and services of intensive use of manpower such as mail services (private couriers) and juniors” (Dörre 2009). On the other hand, the “flexible forms of hiring and especially the external flexibilization ways such as fixed term agreements, piecework agreements and outsourcing” are promoted, which “acquire particular meaning for the accumulation pattern” where “companies pretend to obtain additional profits excluding them from flexibilization and labor precarity” (Dörre 2009: 86).

What is possible to observe is that despite the fact that in “Germany most workers are under protected labor relations”, and “labor precarity is now a less important problem in marginal groups”, considering that there are “three forms of labor precarity that extend – paradoxically- through every zone of social cohesion”. (Dörre 2009: 89 – 90). The precarity is not marginal, its is social.

For Klaus Dörre the “Transition from a marginal precarity to a discriminatory precarity” (Dörre 2010: 90 - 91) becomes a process where precarity of certain specific occupations in the occupational structure advanced to a substantial change of/in the labor markets: the debate changes from precarity to increased (social) precarity as a tendency and a dynamic of the labor world in which the subjectification of precarity forms are transformed (Dörre 2009: 91 – 98).

This change in subjectification though “discriminatory precarity” is reflected by Dörre (2009: 92) in three diagnoses: 1. Two ways of integration through wage employment: He distinguishes between two ways of work integration (one reproductive and focused io the power of work and the other sensitive and focused on the creative content). Thus there are highly qualified segments that does not see themselves as precarious but as “successful” in the adaptation to flexible work, and a “self-responsibility” before the market, transiting between “assured integration and precarity”, but with a strong component of “identification with the work contents and a high level of

integration in social networks related to this job” (Dörre 2009: 92 – 94), which transits and look like the forms of independent professionals self-employment (Dörre 2009: 95). 2. The borderline for creative precarity: In this case Dörre (2009: 95) establishes that “the combination of creative work with employment constitutes a borderline that presents innumerable shades of the changes between unconventional integration and transitory precarity”, where a marked labor situation is possible to identify by a “high social integration and broad spaces for auto-determination regarding the organization of work itself but also because of a low level of formalization”. The phenomenon identified herein is that “many creative precarity workers identify themselves with the ideal type of those unconventionally integrated instead of aspiring for a conventional integration by means of formal salaried work” (Dörre 2009: 97), which generates problems at the level of regulation and protection policy of this workers. 3. Discriminatory precarity as a permanent condition: this case has to do with most labor precarity workers who do not find identification and realization of their work, where precarity and difficulties of planning their lives involve “a distance from a desired normality, generating a certain mixture of uncertainty, shame, rage and resignation” (Dörre 2009: 98). In this zone of labor precarity “perceptions and subjectification become permanent” with a “suspension situation” that forces workers to “mobilize all energy available in order to reach a more stable and better remunerated position, and threatened by a definitive exclusion from regular salaried work in case of giving up” (Dörre 2009: 98).

This emerging paradigm is ultimately the consolidation of a radical transformation in the technological, productive, temporal and spatial dimension (Harvey 1989; 2003; Sassen 2007; Dörre 2010; Rosa 2011) and a transformation of the forms of corporate management in terms of discipline matrix, precedent9, giving rise to “a ‘short term regime’ which generates an abstract and mercantile form of control of perpetuation of competitiveness inside companies and among its employees (Dörre 2009: 85), and from outside as a coerced

9 See here studies by Claudia Figari, & Hernán Palermo (2009); and by Marcela Zangaro. (2011).

place from a “non-place” located in the middle of unemployment, social disaffiliation and the condition of permanent vulnerability. Dörre (2009: 85) finds here one of the most essential causes for labor precarity as a gradual tendency of decomposition of work in its “functionality” as mechanism of stable integration in capitalist societies and the emergence of these mechanisms of “secondary integration” by means of precarious jobs and the active development of survival strategies (Dörre 2009: 99) which are part of the “integration- disintegration paradox”.

In the union’s space, “companies’ internal agreements have become normalized mechanisms of regulation” which impose “collective agreements” with lower salaries as well as an asymmetric negotiation of the workers’ benefits (regarding remunerations, working days and labor conditions) “as a guarantee to keep the job” (Dörre 2009: 88). This tendency, states Dörre, has contributed to a Balkanization of the fare/salary system (Tarifvertrag), finding itself in a “deep erosion” while “the reality of binding collective agreements that fix standards for salaries and labor conditions is a thing of the past” (Dörre 2009: 88).

In terms of the relation between this process of social labor precarity and the dynamic that the social conflict acquires, Dörre (2009: 104) states that “beyond organized labor relations and the social security systems in obvious erosion, we are living a transition towards non regulated and violent labor conflicts, towards spontaneous revolts for “bread” in marginalized suburbs”.

In the same direction, Klaus Dörre assert that “experiences of labor precarity have not only division dynamics well defined but also the possibility of constructing discursive “Chains of equivalence” 10 allowing us to imaging a temporary political unit on the base of a new social and cultural diversity” (Dörre 2009: 104) thus generating a space for innovation and modernization of workers’ organizations that can respond to the accelerated process of labor precarity in this “equivalence” and “temporary political unit” (Dörre 2011).

10 Mouffe, Chantal, Und jetzt, Frau Mouffe?, in: Geiselberger, Heinrich (Ed.), Und jetzt? Politik, Protest und Propaganda, Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 115.

2.1.4 Richard Sennett: Labor Precarity and Character Corrosion

From Sennett’s point of view (2000; 2003) we agree that the phenomenon of labor precariousness seems to be a part of a chain in which the subject is directed to observe and recognize himself from the formation of an unstable and changeable temporality in the laboring world, with the absence of labor contracts, the explosion of temporary contracts and the formation of a population that does not meet the necessary conditions for the new requirements of a formal job.

The new context characterized by an attack of neo-liberalism on the job’s nature, particularly identifiable in the restructuring of time (Sennett 2000: 47) and the reorganization of life and social reproduction tasks, seems to indicate that in this “flexible and fragmentized present it can only be possible to create coherent narratives on what it has been, and it is no longer possible to create predictive narratives on what will be” (Sennett 2000: 142).

On the other hand, Sennett observes a condition of renunciation of safety, of any type of restrictions regarding the tendencies for flexibilization (firing, hiring, etc.), and the lack of any form of regulation within the work space; the use of flexible fees, poor remunerations (Sennett 2000: 72 – 73), and a maximization of talent as an adaptive counter-tendency to self-creative overexploitation against insufficiency related to sub-employment, low salaries and the undercover “suspicious autonomy” (Sennett 2000: 60 - 62).

There is a break in the value based space regarding work, in the work ethics (Sennett 2000: 143) where the worker tends to suffer an erosion of his character and develops another type of identification towards work, where phenomena such as “the risk” (involving workers’ disorientation and depression) and “illegibility” (of new tasks and modern forms of work) impregnate a fragile contact link between the worker and his work, in which the worker

waits for a specific definition of his tasks and to have a minor involvement in the activity (Sennett 2000: 13).

In this dynamic in which the risk shall constitute one of the bases for “living in a continuous state of vulnerability” (Sennett 2000: 86), Sennett’s proposal shall identify disorientation “that implies moving towards uncertainty” (Sennett 2000: 88), marked by experiences of “ambiguously lateral movements”, “retrospective losses” and “unpredictable incomes” (Sennett 2000: 88).

These groups of situations that constitute the stamp of neo-liberalism generate behaviors related to “anxiety regarding time” or “apprehension for work”, while “time seems to drain us” (Sennett 2000: 101). What happens before these phenomena of psycho-social nature in the work place is that new ethics are molded with regard to work, considering “self- disciplined use of time and value of the postponed gratification” (Sennett 2000: 103), exposed by Sennett as part of “an obsession to ‘prove oneself’ through one’s work. Used casually, the ‘work ethic’ just means the desire of success” (Sennett 2012: 192).

Paradoxically, despite the fact of being founded in this desire of success which is profoundly obsessive and individual, this

“modern work ethic is focused in team work. It celebrates others’ sensibility; requires <> such as being a good listener and being well-disposed to cooperate; team work makes a stand of the team’s capacity to adapt to circumstances… team work is the group practice of the demeaning superficiality” (Sennett 2000: 104).

The modern work ethic shall be deeply maximized with team work which shall involve a transformation in the self-disciplinary individual behavior and the realization, where “mutual receptivity more than personal validation” (Sennett 2000: 111) shall operate as the criteria of group’s ethic, “where power is present in the superficial scenes of work… but authority is absent” (Sennett 2000: 120).

The characteristic of turning authority invisible as part of the “team work fictions” constitutes “the cause of its own superficiality of content; and focusing in the immediate moment and its way to avoid opposition and confrontation are functional to domination” (Sennett 2000: 121).

This new work ethic is what Sennett shall exhibit in his book “culture of the new capitalism” (2006) with a study on the characteristics of labor relations marked by the abandon of craftwork and the necessity to adapt to several abilities instead of focusing on only one and doing it the right way (Sennett 2002; 2009), introducing concepts of flexible organization as part of the dynamics of temporary precarity and adjustment , with a tendency toward outsourcing, labor precarity, reduction of hierarchic levels and the sequence of non-lineal tasks which constitute the core of an “impatient capitalism” of short and immediate terms (Sennett 2006: 25 - 34).

Also, one of the essential problems of current capitalist societies is thereby characterized as: the increase of inequality and disarticulation of the social cooperation links which is associated with the disappearance of the intermediary layers (provoking a social distance between the highest level and the lowest level of society) and the emergence of an “Uncooperative Self” (Sennett 2012: 179 – 195). To summarize, for Sennett all this has given rise to three social problems in the worker: a) a low institutional loyalty; b) diminution of the informal trust among workers (meaning, what every worker would know how to do under pressure and not what he stipulates in his contract, added to the inter- workers vigilance systems); and c) the weakening of institutional knowledge (knowledge in located in the lowest part of a company, who are the first to dismissed).

In this transformation, “labor unions resisted thinking the matter through, focusing on job protection for existing workers rather than on shaping the future workers” (Sennett 2006: 100). This situation involves a new problem inside of the labor movement, especially in his power of reaction and representation of this “new workers”, and the fragmentation of his positions in this new scenario of precarity.

2.1.5.- Guy Standing: Precarity and the Dangerous Class

For Guy Standing, a global transformation was undertaken in the middle 90s. In the process, “all the old systems of regulation, redistribution and social protection were slowly dismantled, along with the institutions and communities that had given them their context” (Standing 2009). Labor precarity shall involve a political operation of “transfer of the reproduction risk of labor force” form the state towards the market sphere.

In this process a group/segment is constituted, the “precariat” (Standing 2011: 8 - 9), which has “minimum relations of trust with capital or the state”, according to the relation of precarity of “long term contracts and the absence of protection against job loss”, is added to this condition “the lack of community support in times of need, the lack of an insurer company or benefits by the state, and the lack of private benefits in order to complement money incomes” (Standing 2011: 12).

The precariat is ultimately a class-in-the-making, which consists in reality of workers in insecure jobs, with no “occupational identity” and fewer rights than normal citizens. That’s why Standing calls them “denizens”, because he understands that

“the precariat is an emerging dangerous class. A group that sees no future of security or identity will feel fear and frustration that could lead to it lashing out at identifiable or imagined causes of its lot” (Standing 2011: 25).

Labor precarity is understood here as the process of being “precarious”, meaning: “being subject to pressures and experiences that lead to a precarious existence, of living in the present without a secure identity or the feeling of accomplishment through work and the life style (Standing 2011: 16) while facing “the uncertainty of returning to a non-specific form of work and to have little prospects of social ascendant mobility” (Standing 2011: 23).

What is fundamental in Standing’s proposal is the formation of precarity, which results in the imposition of a “precarious consensus” as engines of the salary work and its symbolic valuation by the subject, based on fear, anxiety and alienation (Standing 2011: 19 – 21); from the “selection” process to the permanent state of “supervision”, and in a global dimension of transformation of the process framework of commodification and deregulation (Standing 2011: 26 – 28). In the same way, the commodification process has been extended to every aspect of life – the family education system, firm, labor institutions, social protection policy, unemployment, disability, occupational communities and politics” (Standing 2011: 26).

On the other hand, Standing (2011: 31) visualizes a process of “labor re-commodification” ensuring that “the pursuit of flexible labor relations has been the major direct cause of the growth of the global precariat”. He also highlights that

“in efforts to defend the ‘standard employment relationship’, unions, governments and employer bodies permitted temporaries alongside regular employees, creating dualistic labor forces (Standing 2011: 34).

Added to numeric flexibility and functional flexibility (Standing 2011: 36), it is possible to identify “changes in occupational structures” that have “disrupted the capacity of people to control and develop their occupational potential”, because in the globalization era, governments quietly dismantled the institutions of ‘self-regulation’ of professions and crafts, and in their place erected elaborate systems of state regulation” (Standing 2011: 38 – 39), which would go along with the neo-liberal policies (i.e. dismantle of the public sector, the unemployment and the financial shock), and “wage system flexibility” (Standing 2011: 40 – 42).

In this new scenario the “salariat retained, and continued to gain, an array of enterprise benefits and privileges, with bonuses, paid medical leave, medical insurance, paid holidays, creches, etc., has been losing them by bit. The precariat was deprived of them altogether” (Standing 2011: 41). This is a process of “re-commodification, since remuneration is

concentrated on money wages”, the “restructuring of social income” (Standing 2011: 44) and the decline of social mobility (Standing 2011: 57).

By identifying the existence of “varieties of precariat”, Standing (2011: 59) argues that the main subjects in the precarity process are marked by two phenomena: of female work (Standing 2011: 60 – 61), the re-adequacy of the reproductive roles and the relationship between femininity-masculinity; in addition, the yoth as a group of urban nomads with feelings of frustration, lack of expectations and social resentment, before a co-modified education system and generational tensions (Standing 2011: 65 – 77); the elderly, which are destabilized because of the reforms to social security systems and difficulties to find themselves without a sufficient retirement in order to retire from productive activities (Standing 2011: 79 – 86); criminals and prison population (Standing 2011: 87 – 88); finally, ethnic minorities and migrants (Standing 2011: 90).

Labor precarity also involves a multidimensional transformation of work temporality. In it the precariat is “under time stress. It must devote a growing amount of time to work-for- labor, without it offering a reliable road to economic security or an occupational career worthy of the name” (Standing 2011: 130), which implies an intensification of work and a logic towards self-overexploitation.

A fundamental element within this scheme is the formation of “the panoptical society” in which the invasion of privacy and early childhood education (in schools and universities) is transported to disciplining in the work space with the “evaporation of privacy” and new “monitoring systems” (Standing 2011: 135 – 138). The social consequences of this regime can be observed in the acts of a paternalist state, the demonization and criminalization of the precariat sprouts through neo-fascist policies and groups (Standing 2011: 147), while the precariat distrusts the labor projects and social-democracy in its pursuit of security (Standing 2011: 155 - 156).

2.2 Approaches to Precarity in the South

Having reviewed several authors of a spatial and temporal context such as the European society, we ask ourselves the following question: What are the cases and the specifics of labor precarity in the South? Labor precarity shows diverse faces and shades in different places in the world (Silver & Arrighi 2001).

The concept of South, as a legacy of the traditional debate between center-periphery (Furtado 1976; Amin 2010), the dependence theory (Frank 1970; 1982; Marini 1971; 1973) and world-system theory (Wallerstein 2004), exhibits itself as an example of the world’s polarization, the changes in the space reproduction and capital mobility in the globalization process. For other part, is related to the neo-colonial practices in the new capitalist accumulation regime in a global scale.

Among the answers to the accumulation pattern crisis (Harman 2007), the project of production adjustment re-modernization was found, which is synthesized in the group of neo-liberal policies and the flexible accumulation model which was a part of a neo- capitalist strategy/project with the purpose of restitution of the bases for domination and power of the capitalist class in a global scale (Harvey 2001).

Phenomena of accelerated and demarcated social polarization are connected in this process, joined by situations of poverty, exclusion and social inequality which are redefining the characteristics of the spaces of socialization and communication in the societies of the global South. Thus the articulation of the peripheral countries of global capitalism to the global society in expansion, and the form that “capital as an abstraction that has reached the highest level of its depersonalization” acquires, leads to the strengthening of “an accumulative logic independently from the social subjects in which it embodies” (De la Garza 2001b: 22).

At the current time the South seems to be experiencing the emergence of resistance and the “deactivation of the neo-liberal policies energy which arise outside the national and

international institutions” since 1990 (Prashad 2013: 9), spurring the activation of new political forces in the reconstruction of dynamics of resistance and organization against the economic and social restructuring from capital (Harvey 2001; 2007).

Corresponding to this kind of resistance actions is a heterogeneous group of social formations and changes in the political configurations, which find a nodal meeting point as to: a) their asymmetric position in international relations of exchange, circulation and economic production, as part of a global law of value and valorization; b) a process of tension between (re)conquest, resistance and emancipation in the social and cultural mindset due to the exercise of cultural hegemony of a neo-colonial American-European west; and c) an offensive process of violence against nature, the environment and the human being by means of predatory economic models and productive methods based in a neo-extractivist policy11.

According to this shift in course, the Global South acquires the form of “a place of great struggles of several tactics and strategies experienced in the streets and governmental office. It is a never ending story” (Prashad 2013: 11).

For Silver (2003: 171), in the case of the working class

...we should expect to see a new working class formation and emerging labor movements in the leading industry and industries of the 21st century... the late 20th century crisis of labor movements is temporary and will likely be overcome with the consolidation of new working classes “in formation”.

This vision goes along with diagnosis such as Paul Mason’s (2012), Peter Waterman’s (2012) and Ronaldo Munck’s (2003) regarding the construction of a global working class,

11 For a more complex analysis we invite you to read the author Domingues (2012), where the concept of semi-periphery is developed, involving the relation of new conditions between the centre-periphery, the internal complexity of economies with their own peripheries, the autonomy levels and developments accomplished, etc., in the emerging semi-periphery associated with countries such as the BRICS that play a role in the construction of a multi-polar order with particular structures and economic conditions that, for our analysis, involve the construction of new work organization, valorization and symbolization devices.

which places as part of the objectives of its study the “low-waged workforce of the Global South against the high-waged workers of Europe, America and Japan”, acknowledging that “globalization has forced labor organizations to begin thinking globally – even if they are slow to think that way” (Mason 2012: xiv).

In order to explain the main phenomena experienced in the Global South regarding the labor world scenario and before analyzing the specificity with which labor precarity manifests itself in these contexts, we must acknowledge three different theses corresponding to three socio-historic contexts and three different temporary dimensions in the formation of the Global South: a) the marginality thesis; b) the informality thesis and, c) the social exclusion thesis.

2.2.1 José Nun and Aníbal Quijano: Marginality Thesis

Marginality appears as a category in the 1960s. During this decade, ( developmentalist theories were formulated in different spaces of the Global South, aiming to modernization and synchronization of Global South’s projects with those of developed countries. This situation involved the dissemination of certain structural differences and socio-economic and historic heterogeneity in regions of the South, which in the case of Latin America meant the tension of the project called Industrialization by Substitution of Importations (ISI), debating “which were the mechanisms for jobs generation explaining the existence of poor workers who did not have access to the economic growth benefits” (Zuazúa 2005: 1).

From a structural-functionalist approach “Marginality” was treated as a “cancer to be removed” from the development model, which was to be supposedly accomplished by introducing changes in the marginalized groups’ social organization and not in the excluding system, which was to remain constant (Perona 2012).

To other theory matrices such as Marxism, marginality appeared as a category that could reveal the structural relation existing between Latin American processes of accumulation and the social inequality and poverty phenomena; which was associated with the

“dependency theory” as a means to understand the precondition that “extends the unequal situation in which the lower layers are inserted, as well as ethno-racial minorities and migrants” (Schulze 2013: 93), inquiring as to the “economic relations and others between the metropolis and its economic colonies through the global expansion’s history and the development of the mercantilist and capitalist system” (Frank 1970: 133), considering the alliances between multinational capital and national bourgeoisie.

Contrary to the modernization theories, as stated by Schulze (2013: 98)

“Economic marginality theory maintained that the referred class was not people but production social relations. This theory’s core was the concrete historic conditions that gave way to the industrialization process indicating all existing differences with the constitution of European capitalism process which modernization theory has taken as a model”.

The marginality category in Nun’s (1969) and Quijano’s (1970) proposal helped to reveal the contradictory situation that implied the modernization model by generating a stratum of workers, mainly in the urban areas, that could not incorporate to the development model, thus remaining marginalized from the benefits that this process supposedly contributed to the region. This debate involved the debate regarding the character of the “Reserve army”, “overpopulation” and its functionality to an accumulation dynamic such as the one in Latin America.

On the one hand, Nun (1969) shall formulate his thesis regarding the marginal mass which consists of stating that this marginal segment would not be functional to the capitalist accumulation system, criticizing the “industrial reserve army” thesis used by Marx in chapter 23 of “the Capital”, according to a relative overpopulation that produces “non- functional” effects, which at the time reveals “the heterogeneity and amplified segmentation of the occupational structure” (Nun 2001: 295) and its effects in the construction of social identities.

On the other hand, Quijano (1970) represents the “marginal pole” thesis consisting of a population marginal to the capitalist process in the region, which is not non-functional at all, considering it to hold the ties to the modern capitalist system, surviving in conditions of poverty without a deep generation of wealth. For Quijano the “marginal pole” was represented by

“all economic productive and/or commercial activities of workers without a job or stable salary incomes, in which residual resources (those not used by the capital) or resources of poor quality and low price are used; with a very low productivity; none or very elemental work division in which the work and/or labor force are exchanged, mainly but not exclusively, among members of the same family and privately; and where profitability is so low that only incomes for his family’s survival and/or reproduction of the same economic activity are allowed, without any margin of accumulation or capitalization” (Quijano 1970: 34).

In this regard, Quijano understood that marginal populations acted as a real reserve labor force, considering that such population

“does not constitute a reserve for these levels (those of modern characteristics) of industrial production anymore, but a manpower that loses in a permanent fashion and not transitorily the possibility of being absorbed as technological production advances, mainly in the industrial urban production that has hegemony on the global economy” (Quijano 1970: 26)

What we want to underline in the marginality thesis for our investigation is that it ultimately revealed the structural failures in the decades of 1950 and 1960, as well as the reproduction conditions of peripheral capitalism which were marginalizing a great part of the working class and creating a sector of precariat workers which was debated with regard to functionality and non-functionality of the ISI model. A thesis and a dualist vision of peripheral societies were created from that scenario (Candia 2003).

2.2.2 Alejandro Portes: Thesis on Informality.

In 1972 a report presented by the International Labor Organization regarding the situation in Kenya used for the first time the concept of urban informal sector. According to Candia (2003: 38) “the apparent ideological neutrality made it appealing for labor authorities and protected it from the over-politicized polemic with which the marginality concept was approached”.

Even so this concept integrated the duality of peripheral capitalist societies by considering, due to Lewis’s influence (1961), the existence of “two major economic sectors: one of survival and the other capitalist”, where the modern sector of the market

“absorbs the labor force excess of less integrated economic areas, offering a wage level relatively higher than average production but without destroying the operability of the survival strips in which little producers survive” (Candia 2003: 38 - 39).

Meanwhile on the other hand, this concept had its theoretical source in the “developing approach of the Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLAC)” considering that

“this organism relied on an equation formed by two main variables, the urban population growth accentuated by the migratory flows, and the limitations of the industrial and services apparatus in order to maintain a rhythm of adequate expansion. Combination of both factors impeded that economies of the region could incorporate the new groups of job searchers” (Candia 2003: 39).

The case is that the concept would present “a social sector which escapes classical entrepreneurial and worker paradigms; landowners or industries; merchants and middle classes”, due to the fact that

“there were overwhelming indications that a vast layer of the working population of peripheral countries obtained labor activity income that were not clearly defined in studies and diagnosis that were used as basis to sustain the social assistance programs and fight against poverty” (Candia 2003:37).

Alejandro Portes’ thesis (1985; 1995) on informal labor in capitalist Latin America would be the most radical theoretical adventure in order to determine that the informal sector would undergo “precarity” due to its composition and origin, and that formality - specific to the “modern sector” of the economy - would be the nucleus of an precarity of occupations that defies the employment status of prior decades (Portes & Hoffman 2003; Cervantes 2009). Additionally, informality is seen as being in contrast to formalization strategies that aim toward modernizing employment and labor relations (Tokman 2001).

On Castells’ and Portes’ (1989: 2-3) work, informal economy

“is thus not an individual condition, but a process of income-generating activity characterized by one central feature: it is unregulated by the institutions of society, in a legal and social environment in which similar activities are regulated. It is this difference in the way a given activity is performed that provides a competitive advantage for informal organizations over others”.

Since this productive restructuring, the composition of the class structures during the neoliberal era has mutated (Portes & Hoffman 2003; Atria 2004), but it has not escaped the variance of prior models of work organization that were coined by forms that constitute in situ expressions of what, a posteriori, may be called “labor precarity” (Cuauhtemoc & Robles 2008), but rather as a product, institutionalized or not, of the dynamic of the conflict of classes.

Thus, the peculiarity of structural differentiation in Latin America, which implies phenomena such as the “increase of self-employed workers in the informal sector and micro-entrepreneurs in the whole region (Portes & Hoffman 2003:5), the decrease of the

real salary, accompanied by the massive entry of women into the labor market, etc., become phenomena that are tied, in theoretical terms, to the condition and the surfacing of labor precarity, from the vision and matrix of job formalization, that prevail in international organizations such as the ILO, which voids biographical, trajectory and historical aspects that configure the job relationships in the region, and the capital/work connection.

In addition, Castell and Portes (1986: 20-24) consider the process of <> to be a strategy for capital to reach a higher degree of adaptation to the fluctuations of demand and minimization of costs, as reflected in the division of the productive process, particularly in decentralizing productive activity but keeping information on the global process centralized (Cortes 2000: 601).

Mention is made of the process of outsourcing certain tasks of the productive process, which are transferred to micro-enterprises, family owned workshops and small household productive units (Portes & Benton, 1987), something that would generate

“conditions of “unlawfulness” with expressions of lack of legal protection for the labor force that works without any coverage of the social security systems, loss of benefits and, in most cases, hiding the worker-employer relationship by not declaring it, something that is commonly known in South America as ‘trabajo en negro’ or unregistered employment” (Candia 2003:41).

Something that may be retained for our research from the thesis of informality is the character taken on by a sector of the economy when faced with structural conditions of vulnerability that would intensify the forms of precarious employment, but that at the end make up the peripheral character of capitalism in societies of the Global South.

2.2.3.- Thesis on Social Exclusion

The debate on social exclusion is cut across by the presence of a “new social question” (Castel 1997) that would involve phenomena such as poverty, unemployment and social

inequality (Kessler 2011); this situation is added to gender and ethnic-racial discrimination issues (Sepulveda 2010).

“Social exclusion” as a concept is relatively new in the approaches of development (Neville 2007:249), something that has more relevance in Latin America, starting from the impact on social structure by the series of measures and economic reforms that characterized neoliberalism in the region (Atria 2004; Hoehn 2009) which distinctly polarized the integration areas and social disaffiliation (Kessler 2011), combining phenomena such as poverty and marginality, reaffirming “structural heterogeneity of employment”, which is characterized by the co-existence of

“a sector with modern private and public employment, ruled by bureaucratic regulations, and increasing contingencies for persons working in informal circuits (or “black” economies) or that are self-employed” (Cortes & Escobar 2005:151).

According to Kessler (2011: 5-6) what the “social exclusion” concept would denote, unlike concepts such as poverty (where both would not be equivalent, and therefore would not be a conceptual saturation), is “the emphasis in social participation, social acknowledgement and social relations”.

Amartaya Sen (2000:1) proposes that the concept of “social exclusion” dates back to Europe, 1974, when the Secretary of State of social action of the French Government, Rene Lenoir, made reference to the marginal population and “socially maladjusted” that had been left out of the wellbeing benefits of the state. It was not a small figure because it represented 10% of the French population (in that year) that was being characterized as “handicapped, suicidal, abused children, drug addicts, delinquents, single mothers and fathers, households with multiple problems, marginal people, asocial people and other social misfits”.

This diagnosis of social exclusion in France was marked by a “single focus”, social exclusion (Silver 1996). Kessler (2011: 8) ensures that it is characterized by a “conceptual

lack of precision of the idea of social exclusion”, which paradoxically was what gave it “its potential for social policies by allowing homogenization of a series of new situations, dissimilar from each other, without the need of having a previous substantive decision on the identity of those excluded”.

On the other hand, it is possible to “compare the centrality of the concept in France with, for example, its scarce presence in North American debate”, which shows “that exclusion appears as a problem within societies that have high degrees of integration”12. Thus, finally the last paradox of social exclusion seems to emerge as “a claim to unfulfilled promises of a society that thought of itself as completely integrated”.

Sen’s focus (2000:3) shall try to evidence that

“the idea of social exclusion has conceptual connections with well-established notions in the literature on poverty and deprivation, and has antecedents that are far older than the specific history of the terminology might suggest”.

“Deprivation” would constitute a fundamental role in order to understand the originality of the concept and the dynamics of exclusion (Naville 2007: 248); according to Sen (2000: 8) the input made by the social exclusion concept is found “in its practical influence in forcefully emphasizing — and focusing attention on — the role of relational features in deprivation”.

While referring to deprivation, Kessler (2011: 8-9) acknowledges it as the third paradox of “social exclusion”, where “more extreme exclusion is unthinkable, nor is it cognoscible, escaping the possibility itself of being though of or represented”, in other words, where all of society is profoundly deprived from thinking of itself at the moment of denying the public exercise of certain groups in the public sphere.

12 As an example, it is possible to identify Loic Wacquant’s research (1992), where he compares the feeling of youth of large apartment complexes in France, that upon going to the center of town experience a fantasy of integration at the time of feeling equal to the rest, but at the time of returning to their marginal neighborhoods feel a sense of anger and exclusion, something that had also been analyzed by Francois Dubet (1986) in La Galère.

In the case of Latin America, the concept started being used in the 90s, particularly since the effects of neoliberal policies and the return of democratic regimes in the region began to set in. A document from ECLAC points out that:

“social exclusion is a process that arises from the progressive weakening or a lasting break of the bonds that unite the subjects of the society they belong to, thus creating a division between those that are inside and those that are outside. Therefore, exclusion refers to processes through which some people do not only possess less, but are increasingly incapable of accessing different scopes of social life” (ECLAC 1998:4).

For Danani (2001:6) “exclusion” was nothing but “a result deliberately sought…a necessary part and the only result possible…of the ways of organization of social life” which involved the adjustment of neoliberal policies that was not only related to phenomena such as poverty and social inequality but with a tendency towards “social disintegration” according to the incapability of society of integrating its members, thus becoming “a menace for social cohesion” (ECLAC 1998:4).

According to this, social exclusion gathers a series of situations of deprivation and precarity, which are phenomena associated with unemployment, precarious employment, part time employment and/or sub employment, inadequate working conditions, absence of affiliation and pension quotations, low productivity of activities, low income/salaries, lack of access to credit, lack of access to justice and social programs, difficulties in political participation and socio-cultural exclusion, among others (ECLAC 1998:13-50).

During our research we may highlight the “pluralistic or multi-dimensional approach of social exclusion”, this approach according to the International Labor Organization (Rodgers 1994), considers 3 spheres of exclusion, from work, within work and certain goods and services valid according to different countries. Thereupon, according to local peculiarities, there are other spheres, such as land exclusion in countries with high levels of rural

poverty, justice and freedom in non-democratic countries, gender equality in countries characterized by discrimination, credit in countries with a high degree of informality, among others. This allows overcoming the dichotomy of the approach (included vs. excluded) and the establishment of a broader level of deprivation such as the hierarchical phenomenon of social exclusion (Kessler 2011:9).

In our case, what we may retain from the focus of social exclusion is the character in which work is conducive to logics of deprivation associated with precarity, not only in societies of the Global South, but also in the capitalistic center, which allows the identification of a spatial coordinates of “social exclusion” and also labor precarity. This dimension will be dealt with again in the next paragraph.

2.3.- New Studies about Labor Precarity in the Global South

Acknowledging the multi-dimensional distinction that makes up the South, as a space of constant re-adjustment and social struggles/conflicts, particularly based on the three aforementioned theses, makes us think of job and labor precarity from a differentiated perspective, reflexive and contextual. Within this direction, we may highlight research undertaken in:

a) The Chinese society, addressing phenomena such as “proletarization”, migration and models of original accumulation (Solinger 1999: Wu 2009): b) Debates on labor precarity in countries like South Africa (Von Holt & Webster 2005: Barchiesi 2011; Scully 2012) societies with a recent colonial tradition, according to the exercise of new neo-colonial forces in post-colonial processes; c) The study of societies such as the Brazilian one and the exercise of a politics of the unemployed in movement and demobilization, and the processes of labor precarity (Antúnez 2011; Antúnez & Pochmann 2008). d) Gelvin’s research (2011) on the impact of labor precarity in Arab countries, as phenomena of social precarity, crisis of the reproduction model and the outbreak of social protests during the so called “Arab Spring”.

e) Or for example, the studies undertaken by Harris-White & Gooptu (2001) on the work conditions of unorganized (unionized) workers in the case of India, showing their frailty, structural and symbolic condition that comes with their activity and reproduction.

This distinction between the history of poor nations and the constitution of the Global South means that the work world, and therefore labor precarity, become phenomena of a historical colonial legacy, deeply rooted in the over exploitation of work, slavery, dispossession of indigenous peoples, informality, etc., that end up as historical tendencies of the expansion of the geographical limits of capital, and that involve heterogeneous populations of heterogeneous traditions, cultures and economies at the time of being inserted into the global chain of capitalist accumulation.

This tendency involves and requires, from an academic and epistemological perspective, a relocation of the category of “precarity”. For that is necessary considering the diverse and disperse socio-historical contexts in the introduction of “the condition of precarity” and the precarious “lack”. We shall embark onto the global approach in the case of South Africa and Brazil.

2.3.1 Edward Webster & Karl Von Holdt: South Africa and Apartheid

For Webster and Von Holdt (2004: 4) the new post-apartheid work order in South Africa is emerging. The apartheid workplace regime constituted a racial structuring of workplace relations, but in the new context the work order in South Africa

“is being restructured under the impact of a complex, diverse and often contradictory range of pressures that we describe like a triple transition – with political, economic and social dimensions” (Von Holdt & Webster 2004).

The context of a “Chaotic transition” (Von Holdt 2003) has created a “host of new democratic and social rights for workers, trade unions and citizens and generated at the same time an intense contestation over the realization of this rights”, with a “profound process of redistribution of power and access to resources, occupations and skills, together with intense struggles over these (Webster & Von Holdt 2004: 4).

In this process of redistribution, the investigation of Webster and Von Holdt (2004: 5), reveals a

“Growing differentiation within the world of work, producing three major zones. First, there are the core, formal-sector workers in more or less stable employment relations; they have wages, benefits and access to democratic worker and trade unions rights. Second, there is the zone of casual and externalized work, where non- core workers are compelled into less stable employment relations; sometimes they have temporary or part-time contracts with the core enterprise and at other time more precarious contracts with intermediaries such as labor brokers, informal factories or subcontractors. Then there is the third zone, the periphery, where people ‘make a living’ through informal sector activities ranging from those that permit a degree of petty accumulation through subsistence activities to full unemployment”.

In this new post-apartheid scenario, the restructuring of capital is in transition. The transformation of the economic structure was a reality. Webster and Von Holdt (2008: 334) argued than

“In the period 1970-1995, 211,000 jobs in the mining sector were shed. While the manufacturing, utilities and construction sector gained 400 000 jobs over the same 25 year period, Bhorat and Hodge argue that for a key sector of the South African economy such as manufacturing to gain so few jobs were early signs of “an un- dynamic if not a struggling sector” (Bhorat & Hodge 1999: 350). Over the same period the highest increases in jobs were in the financial and businesses services

sector and the wholesale and retail sector where both these sectors gained approximately 1.2 million workers”.

The process of restructuring has different phases. For example, “in the core of apartheid, the apartheid workplace regime consisted of a racially oppressive order derived from South Africa’s settler-colonial history”, and that generated “intense racial identity, tension and conflict” (Webster & Von Holdt 2005: 7). Thus, Von Holdt (2003; Webster & Von Holdt 2005: 8) identified four distinct workplace strategies in the enterprises where the core of formal sector workers is more important:

“Negotiated reconstruction refers to a strategy of negotiating the terms of reconstituted workplace order, and may be driven by management or trade unions or both. Wildcat co-operation describes a managerial strategy for incorporating black workers by negotiating informally with workers and introducing new management practices, but bypassing or marginalizing trade unions. Authoritarian restoration is a managerial strategy for reconstituting an authoritarian workplace order which draws on the dominant authoritarian strand of South Africa workplace history, but which may introduce new features and practices as well… the lack of any specific strategy or by the failure of an attempted strategy of negotiation or authoritarian”.

The principal purpose of Webster’s and Von Holdt’s (2005: 9) research is the identification of “patterns and contrast that emerges” in the post-apartheid workplace. They identified

“a list of nine factors than range across the workplace relations (apartheid legacy and racial conflict, union activity, attitude to work), forms of employment (casualization and externalization), labor process (new technologies, work organization, workload) and company performance (production quality, company performance gauged in a variety of ways in each case study).

The consequences of the restructuring process also define “the non-core zone”, because of a

“growing trend towards South African employers reconfiguring contracts of employment, with the aim of reducing costs and exposure to the risks that accompany employment… Non-core workers may work in the formal-sector workplace alongside core workers, or may be displaced into specific non-core workplace” (Webster & Von Holdt 2005: 17).

The trade unions, like COSATU have “adopted resolutions to organize ‘atypical workers’, [they] has been less successful in implementing them”. For Webster and Von Holdt (2005: 18) the “increased stratification of the workforce and the precarious nature of employment for casual and externalized workers makes trade union organization more difficult”. But at the same time “there are opportunities and where these have not been seized it is because of the failure of trade unions to develop and implement innovative organizing and mobilizing strategies”.

In this post-apartheid scenario, the problem lies in the new legislation which tends to labor flexibility and externalization, because “workers are economically included in the sense that they are employed and earn wages within the core economy, but at the same time they are excluded to varying degrees from the rights that are conferred on them by labor legislation and even by the South African Constitution – trade union rights, basic conditions of employment, employment equity, skills development, and health and safety regulations” (Webster & Von Holdt 2005: 19).

The continuity of racial character in the workplace is marked by a new authoritarian trend to deny the workers “access to their new rights, and even the rights won through trade unions struggles under apartheid, in the name of increasing competitiveness and reducing costs…polarizing the labor market into different zones” (Webster & Von Holdt 2005: 19 – 20), and where “the trade unions weakness clearly play a role, as do South African managerial traditions” (Webster & Von Holdt 2005: 21), because they are the “primary vehicle not only for improving workplace conditions and protecting workers rights, but also for integrating workers into society” (Webster & Von Holdt 2005: 31), and that is part of the problem of reproduction crises.

On the other hand, and related with the thesis of informal work and labor market polarization, Webster & Von Holdt (2005: 22) indicate the existence of a “peripheral zone” which consists “of those who have been excluded from the formal economy and who engage in informal income-generating activities on its margins”. They introduce the distinction between earning a living and making a living. The latter ones are self-employed, “as well unpaid activities such as childcare and subsistence farming, this zone includes paid work, as when a petty entrepreneur employs assistants” (Webster & Von Holdt 2005: 22).

The increase and expansion of this zone, “the erosion of core jobs, the growth of insecure and low-wage non-core jobs… have generated a widespread increase in poverty”, where “households have… sites of production and reproduction attracting poorer family members in search of security (Webster & Von Holdt 2005: 23).

In any case, this sector shows organization experiences that would transgress “The key barrier to organizing self-employed workers”, in other words, “that they do not have an employer to negotiate with and, therefore, the bargaining leverage that arises from the dependence of the employer on their labor is absent” (Webster & Von Holdt 2008: 349). Thus the importance of organizations such as The Self-employed Women’s Union (SEWU); the National Union of Mineworkers how “established the Mineworkers Development Agency (MDA) to support the formation of rural co-operatives in order to generate alternative sources of income for mine workers who had been retrenched from their jobs in the core economy” (Webster & Von Holdt 2005: 25).

This different experiences of organization studies for Webster & Von Holdt in South Africa (2008: 351), suggest there

“is potential for organization and mobilization in order to challenge the remaking and fragmentation of the working class, but at the same time highlighting the difficulties and obstacles to achieving this. Significant progress will only be made if there is a concerted effort to commit resources and above all to develop innovative

new associational strategies that recognize the potential for symbolic power as an alternative to the erosion of structural power”.

These phenomena occurred in the post-apartheid context, where Webster and Von Holdt (2005: 27) identified “a process of increasing differentiation in the workplace between three broad zones of work – the core, the non-core and the periphery”. The authors suggest an “asymmetrically interdependence” of these three zones, with “the third zone increasingly marginalized under the impact of merchandising”. This process is explained as follows:

“While core workplace are dependent on non-core workers and to a lesser extent on certain activities in the in-formalized periphery, non-core workers and intermediary employers are far more dependent on core enterprises, as is the periphery and its activities” (Webster and Von Holdt 2005: 27).

The conclusions from Webster and Von Holdt’s studies are related to the problem of social reproduction, specifically “the apartheid workplace regime – most notably the racial organization power, racial tension and the racial division of skills –and undermining employment equity and skills” which is associated with “worker dissatisfaction and alienation, and in some cases high level of contestation, resistance to authority and production inefficiency”, pushing more “workers to the edge of poverty, with a corresponding impact on household sustainability”. (Webster & Von Holdt 2005: 29).

The shift of this “new authoritarian workplace order is secured through” the diversification of strategies related to the workplace: “shifting core workers into the non-core zone, or by severing them from employment altogether and casting them onto the periphery”; but for “managers it may be resolving the crisis of post-apartheid workplace order by displacing confrontation, antagonism and disorder into the family, the household and the community”… with the “reorganization of the lines of inclusion and exclusion in South Africa society… producing an enclave of development in a sea of poverty and social stagnation” (Webster & Von Holdt 2005: 31).

In this direction of a “crisis of reproduction”, with the “commodification of labor” and the emergence of a “counter-movement” the conclusion for the South African case is to “re- conceptualize the meaning of work to include all three zones as well as social reproduction in householders and communities”, where the trade union face a ‘crisis of representation’ as they “lose their capacity to provide a voice for growing numbers of the working poor” (Webster & Von Holdt 2005: 38).

The challenges for the trade unions in this scenario of precarity in the workplace regime in South Africa is affront the “increasing differentiation and polarization of the world of work”, because that will “revive its organizational energies in the core zone and turn its rhetorical commitment to organizing the non-core-zone into innovative and sustained strategies” (Webster & Von Holdt 2005: 37).

2.3.2.- Ronaldo Munck: Precarity of the Global South.

The work of Ronaldo Munck takes a “global approach”, belonging to so called “global labor studies” (2003). In this part of the chapter we are going to concentrate on his last text concerning “The precariat: a view from the South” (2013), where he proposes (2013: 747) a “detailed examination of the term precariat from a global perspective to redress the balance in recent debates around this concept”, especially about the use of this term in the work of Standing (2011), discussing the genealogy and its different expression in the Global South.

Furthermore, the question that drives his analysis is whether: the term precariat “is novel or even relevant, for the millions of workers and urban poor in the Global South for whom precarity has always been a seemingly natural condition?” (Munck 2013: 747). Munck’s strategy to resolve this question is the genealogy of the term ‘precariat’, and that is related to the theory of ‘marginality’ (commented before in the point 2.2.1), which “emerged in Latin America in the 1960s to account for the vast number of under-employed internal migrants who surrounded the main cities with their makeshift dwellings, and who appeared to be in all senses ‘marginal’ to the capitalism system” (Munck 2013: 748).

The limitations are presented for Munck in relation to the process of “formation of a labor aristocracy”, the continuity in terms of “employment patterns between the formal an informal sectors rather than a rigid divide”, where the poor were not “anomic individuals, mere symptoms of a social breakdown”, but on the contrary “developed strong social networks and survival strategies of considerable dynamism” and in the same trend “the dialectical of capital accumulation required, inescapably, the provision of labor and raw materials input from the ‘backward’ sector” (Muck 2013: 748 – 749).

Later, Munck would develop the term of “informality” (commented before in section 2.2.2), “to describe workers outside the formal capitalist system” vis-a-vis the distinction between wage-earning and self-employment, constituting a sector which “embraces a whole range of occupations, from small-scale manufacturing and retail to domestic service and various illegal activities, united only in terms of being beyond the reach of labor law, labor contracts, licensing and taxation laws” (Munck 2013: 749).

Munck explains how is possible that the informal sector, “in its brave defiance of state, acted as a champion for development and thus also served to vindicate the free market policies of triumphant neo-liberalism”. So the informal sector “was no longer a problem; rather, it embodied the promise of an unregulated market system” (Munck 2013: 750).

Finally, Munck presents the debate about the concept of Social exclusion (point 2.2.3), which emerges in Europe in the 80s like a “overarching paradigm to analyze the ‘new poverty’ of the era of globalization, especially in the context of the need to produce a social ‘safety net’ alongside the unregulated expansion of finance and capitalist development more broadly”. His approach was “on the need for social order and moral integration. This discourse detected the emergence of an urban underclass that supposedly suffered from a ‘culture of dependence’ it would have to be weaned off”. (Munck 2013: 750).

The revision of these three theses is necessary because the

“emergence of the term ‘precariat’ needs to be situated in the context of these earlier attempts to theorize a form of work (and living) which does not appear to conform either to liberal notions of harmonious development or Marxist theories of capitalism generating a proletariat which was to be its gravedigger” (Munck 2013: 751).

With the crisis of the social regime of accumulation from Fordism, “Precarious forms of work (precarité) and precarious modalities of employment were on the rise”. This process “was seen as part of the process of decline of centrality of the wage of the wage relationship in structuring society”. The combination was the erosion of the employment norms “and various forms of non-standard working relations were coming to the fore”. This context “Precarity was probably more of a descriptive category and was not deemed a totally new phenomenon or a self-sufficient one” (Munck 2013: 751).

Munck’s critique on Standing’s concept of “precariat” has a double character:

a) First, it is a critique to the construction of the concept of “precariat” from the negativity, i.e. The precariat is more or less defined by what it is not—a mythical, stable working class with full social and political rights—and by its vague feelings of anomie and distance from the orthodox labor movement” (Munck 2013: 751 – 752); and

b) Second is a critique, “in terms of social class theory” to the thesis “that the precariat is even a ‘class in the making’. Because Munck argued that “Class locations are determined by their role in the relation of production and reproduction. Social classes are also relational, they do not emerge on their own, and we need to specify the antagonistic relations of production they are based on. Nothing said about the precariat defines a new role in terms of the relations of production of contemporary capitalism nor do we have any understanding of how these might be fundamental to the reproduction of the social system as a whole” (Munck 2013: 752).

The most radical thesis from Munck about precarity in the Global South is that “from a Southern perspective work has always-already been precarious, a basic fact which unsettles the notion that something new has been discovered”, where the “southern experience of precarity is marked by the nature of the postcolonial state and, later, by the development state where this has emerged” (Munck 2013:752).

Accordingly, “the precariat is an overblown concept and precarity a more specific condition than is usually implied, this does not mean that the processes referred to are irrelevant” (Munck 2013: 754). This process is related to an “expanded reproduction of capital on a global scale and the dramatica increases of subsumption of non-capitalist forms of production” (Munck 2013: 754), with direct consequences for the proletarization and informalization of work, because right now “is not, to be sure a dichotomy between the formal and informal economies but rather a continuum based on considerable synergies and grey overlapping areas” (Munck 2013: 755).

This scenario presents just one of the possibilities for the debate about precarity in the global South: “A perspective from the global South would understand precarity as part of the broader process of dispossession and the generation of new ‘surplus populations’” (Munck 2013: 757), because this approach allows a historical view from this process and finds some regional similarities into the African, Asian and Latin American experiences.

In political terms, the critique to the form of precariat in Standing’s (2011) thesis - precariat as a dangerous class –, is related to the colonial discourse about the “racist construction of the Southern ‘Other’… This racial discourse of exclusion and construction of the other as dangerous was replicated in Latin America, where slum dwellers were once called ‘cabecitas negras’ (Black heads) by decent burghers of the city” (Munck 2013: 759).

For Munck the most critical element in the precariat concept is “the complete lack of understanding of contemporary labor or of the labor movement’s organizations and strategies” in a context where “the organizations of the broad working class –national and transnational trade unions, social movement and grassroots organizations, etc. – have also

begun to revive after the long neoliberal night and cannot be so easily dismissed as relies of ‘old labor’, as Standing tends to do” (Munck 2013: 760). That is part of the global approach of precarity proposed by Ronaldo Munck.

2.3.3.- Ricardo Antúnez: Brazil and the Social Precarization.

In the case of societies such as the Brazilian one, Ricardo Antúnez’s (2003; 2005) approach is focused, at a first instance, on identifying the way differentiating the characteristics of what he calls “job metamorphosis” (2003), which involves a change and heterogeneity of forms of work, particularly from the start of the introduction of new productive models, the relation between dead labor and living labor, and the complexity of the situation of the class-that-lives-of-work, as an expression of the new conditions of impoverishment and loss of job status.

Defining the theories that speak to the loss of the centrality of employment in modern societies, Antúnez questions the example of union “crisis” and the challenges imposed by the loss of status in employment, for the action of a predominant unionism of corporate character and rather functional for the developmental production model of Latin American societies found in the 20th century (Antúnez 2003:57-69).

Antúnez (2003: 63-67) argues that, within the framework of changes and metamorphosis of employment, unionism is faced with a multi-dimensional crisis consisting of 5 points: 1) Individualization of employment relationships, which dislocate relations between capital and work, “from a national area towards the different branches of economic activity and towards the micro universe, work place, enterprise, and the increasingly more individualized relationship within it” (Antúnez 2003:63).

2) The tendency towards liberalizing the work market, which affects “the historical conquests of the unionized movement harshly, having been unable to avoid this tendency” (Antúnez 2003:64).

3) The structural unemployment phenomena that “threatens the disintegration of unions themselves”, which goes in hand with the “exhaustion of the current union models in advanced countries, that opted, during the last decade, for a participative unionism” (Antúnez 2003: 64).

4) The growing “tendency towards bureaucracy and institutionalism of union entities, that are growing distant from social autonomous movements, opting for an alternative of acting that is more integrated to institutionalism”, which would involve a status of conciliation and “moderate through increasingly distancing from anti-capitalist actions, and losing the consequent social radicalization” (Antúnez 2003, 65) and

5) The creation of a climate of “adversity and hostility towards the left, against combative unionism and social movements with a socialist inspiration” (Antúnez 2003: 65). This climate includes phenomena such as “cult towards aggravated individualism and social resignation”, where capital, “by means of more than repressive manipulation methods…enormously increasing its action towards isolating the leftist movements”, which would constitute one of the bonds for identification and action of the unions.

Within this metamorphosis of employment and its link to union crisis, Antúnez observes a reconfiguration of “the senses of employment” (2005; 2013) as practices full of meaning for the subjects-of-employment, which would be constantly changing and adapting, producing forms of symbolism of employment that would disrupt the condition of the subject and the relations of subordination/domination, which would involve a new form of being part of the class that lives from work. (Antúnez 2005: 91-108).

Within this context, Antúnez believes that precarity plays a central role in the “crisis of the workers movement”, and identifies the biggest challenge in

“the passage from the 20th century to the 21st is to weld the bond of belonging to class of the different segments that make up the job world, procuring the articulation of the segments that play a central role in the process of creation of values for

change down to the ones that lie on the margin of the productive process, but that, due to precarious conditions that they are in, make up potentially rebellious social contingents towards capital and its forms of (de)socializing” (Antúnez 2005:186).

The evolution and transformation that employment undergoes in the capitalist periphery shall have central importance to the study of the prior processes. In the case of Brazil and the industrial base it developed during the 20th century, particularly during the 80s “when the first thrusts were generated for productive restructuring that derived in the adoption…of new technological patterns and new arrangements as renewed forms of social organization of work” (Antúnez 2011: 105).

This process shows “productive computerization and the use of just-in-time systems”, which generated “production based on team work, focused on total quality programs, and expanded micro-electric dissemination…and methods called <>”, which sought to “involve (in other words, acquire support and subjection of) workers in the plans of the corporation” (Antúnez 2011: 105-106).

Antúnez believed that the intensification of this process would be undertaken during the 90s, where “huge cuts in the labor force with socio-technical mutations in the productive process and organization of work” were to occur. It is possible to add the increase of phenomena such as “liberalization and de-regulation of work, including outsourcing and new ways of labor force management” (Antúnez 2011:106).

The present condition of the neoliberal globalization process and structural unemployment, which “even if it turned into a generalized reality in central economies, within the periphery of central capitalism, where the degree of social security had not advanced during the golden years, the level of precarity and unemployment were extended even more intensely” (Antúnez & Pochmann 2008:191).

Considering the Latin American expression of this phenomenon of social reproduction crisis (Cortes & Cuellar 1990; Quiroga 2009), where “the systematic exclusion of broad sectors of the population to have access to essential resources to satisfy reproduction, biological and social needs (Quiroga 2009:78), becomes central for understanding the reality of Brazilian society and the phenomenon of labor precarity (Antúnez & Pochmann 2008; Antúnez 2011), because “even if the forms of productive restructuring have been different, a practically constant feature at the time of observing day to day reality of employment, it became the tendency to an increase of de-regulation mechanisms and the very precarity of the labor force” (Antúnez 2011:113).

According to Antúnez, what would be modeled from this process in Brazilian society would be, first, the social forces that push towards “de-construction of work” (Antúnez & Pochmann 2008:192-200), where, from the imposition of a “flexible accumulation” model, a new subject-worker shall be imposed (versatile, flexible and entrepreneur), and a new work model (de-specialized, with new work modes for the informal phenomenon, and a voluntary and atypical character of work).

This would add up to a “structural process of precarity of work”, where global capital would demand “dismantling social legislation that protects labor” (Antúnez & Pochmann 2008: 198); and second, the explosion of unemployment and impoverishment of workers, with a phenomenon of “deepening of crisis in social reproduction within the labor market”, where “the heaviest weight of the active workers is found in Brazilian poverty” (Antúnez & Pochmann 2008:201).

Both tendencies would include for unionism –as well as other social stakeholders-the challenge of

“preventing the de-construction of social rights and obstacle the expansion of differentiated forms of precarity of work, restraining the de-construction of work carried out by capital and recovering and/or creating a new form of sociability of work effectively endowed with sense” (Antúnez & Pochmann 2008: 199).

Lastly, as the product of a decade of studies, Ricardo Antúnez’ identifies the existence of a new morphology of work in Brazil (2011), included in the “attraction of the flow of foreign productive capital towards Brazil”, with the combination of “technologically productive patterns that are more advanced and better <> of the labor force”, presenting the result of “an over exploitation of the labor force, a constitutive and determining feature of Brazilian capitalism” (Antúnez 2011: 107).

2.3.- Synthesis: A Multi-dimensionality framework of Labor Precarity

In order to synthesize the aforementioned theoretical revisions, we may point out that the primacy and extension of forms of precarious labor have introduced new problems for sociology of labor and labor economy, and work relationships.

Labor precarity, observed in the North and South, finds different dimensions, spatial expressions and differentiated casualizations. Thus, we believe it is necessary to, firstly, identify these dimensions in order to make them operative and obtain results that show the reality of specific configuration, beyond absolute homogeneity of labor precarity.

It is our understanding that precarity is expressed in four central dimensions. x Instability: associated with the absence of a contract or existence of temporary contracts (Caamaño 2007) or short term contracts (De la Garza & Neffa 2010). It is directly correlated with the most vulnerable sectors of the economy in terms of employment and qualification, and a process of productive/technological acceleration, of the flexible technological reinvention of the worker (Boltanski & Chiapello 2006), and the entrepreneurial practices of risk management (Holst, Nachtwey, Dörre 2010) as well as the reduction of production costs.

x Insecurity: addresses the absence of coverage and social protection, protection against unemployment, accidents in the workplace, etc. (Sennett 1998; Castel 2002; 2010), and the presence of more than one employer, or an employer that is not

easily identifiable. (Ezquenazi & Marticorena 2010). It is also linked to legal ease in the system of labor relations (Kaufman 2004; Lucena 2006). It also refers to the forms of undercover autonomies (personal), and the new forms of subordination at work (Neffa 1999; Palomino 2004) and the violation of union rights. The lack of collective negotiation13 and union affiliation is highlighted (Ezquenazi & Marticorena 2010).

x Insufficiency: is characterized by the appearance of diverse forms of sub- employment, visible14 and invisible15, phenomena of sub-occupation and over qualification, flexible forms of hiring (temporary), and the existence of low wages, in relation to costs associated to reproduction of life, in other words, at the minimum physiological level that would allow the worker and family to survive16, what Webster and Von Holdt call the problem of the “reproduction crisis” (Webster and Von Holdt 2005: 31). This also includes the absence of typical components of wages (vacations, bonuses, family benefits, and other additional aspects of the agreement) and their re-commodification.

x Poor Working conditions: this dimension consists in the level of corporate discretion and de-regulation that exists in the labor market. It is associated with the characteristics of the activity and work place (dissatisfactory hygienic and safety conditions), and the place where the work is performed (for example, when it is rendered outside of the employer’s domicile). It is also linked to the intensification of production rates and new forms of work organization (Neffa 1999; Moody 2001; Pérez 2008).

13 It specifically refers to the situation in which the basic income is defined during the individual negotiation, without reference to collective negotiation with the current minimum salary as a reference.

14 Visible sub-employment includes workers that work a certain number of working hours less than the hours established for a work day.

15 Invisible sub-employment includes workers that have a wage lower than the established minimum wage.

16 As pointed out by Marx (1975: 208) “up to the volume of the so called essential needs, including satisfying them, is a historical product and therefore largely depends on the cultural level of a country, and essentially, among other things, on the conditions under which the free workers class has been formed, and therefore the habits and vital aspirations. As opposed to other goods, the determination of value of the labor force encloses a historical and moral element.”

These four dimensions, which we believe to synthesize our theoretical revision, shall be empirically explored, both directly and indirectly, in the next chapter by means of the revision of their expression and statistical operability in the case of employment and work in Chile.

Before continuing with this analysis we introduce our last theoretical consideration on the particularity of work precarity in the case of Latin America, and the general phenomenon of work space restructuring and the way to understand precarity within this social, cultural and economic context.

Chapter Three: Precarity in Latin America

Chapter Overview

In the case of Latin America, the restructuring of national economies occurred in different directions which, incidentally, redefine the heterogeneity of forms assumed by national economies today and of their constant dialectic in historical development17 as an ongoing process of differentiation of the periphery (Kay 1998; De la Garza & Neffa 2010).

Along with the introduction of neoliberal policies and the model of flexible accumulation (Harvey 2007), the innovations of the post Ford- and Toyotist models18, Management techniques, productive rationalization, etc. were inserted particularized to the reality of the Latin American context, assuming different temporalities and forms, according to the "geographical location of each country, its technological level, and the cultural and wage conditions of its working population", in short, "the extent and density previously achieved by the spread of capitalist relations" (Gilly & Roux 2009: 32).

Considering the characteristics of the productive sectors, company sizes, ownership of capital, labor standards, etc., a new morphology of labor was generated (Antunez 2003), in which "the capitalist use of new technology not only allows to impose more flexible methods of recruitment (temporary work, part-time or working at home) ", but also tends to "increase and densify the control and domination of the work at the point of production: that living and conflictive point in which there is a meeting between materialized labor and living labor, between past labor and present labor (Gilly & Roux 2009: 45).

17 One must not forget that the “concrete model of capitalism” which stormed into Latin America, which has its roots in the crisis of the old colonial system and extracts its dynamics of organization and evolution simultaneously from economical, technological and institutional incorporation of different capitalist hegemonic countries and from the internal growth of a capitalist market economy…also has another specific and typical component: the accumulation of capital is institutionalized to promote the concomitant expansion of the external and internal hegemonic nuclei (meaning central economies and dominant sectors)” (Fernandes 1978: 202). 18 For a debate on Toyotism see the that proposed by Martha Novick (2001); and on the symbiosis with relegated working cultures (Reygadas, 2000; 2002; 2002b).

These phenomena were also part of the articulation of a holding model in the space of the division of labor at a global level, in the middle of the "crisis of the wage society", the introduction of models of labor flexibility, unemployment and the loss of job safety/security in developed countries.

Both the expansion of transnational capital (Harvey 2003), by means of a neocolonial policy that promoted the displacement and subsidence of the processes of welfare, economic independence and social mobilization that developed in the "Third World" in the Twentieth Century19 served as new sources of the process of globalization (Waterman 2012) and were an important part of the extension and global-spatial transit of the phenomenon of labor precarity.

Reviving the approach of uneven and combined development (Löwy 2010: 52), the crisis of capitalist accumulation of the 70's accounted for capital and the urgent need to restore the rate of profit mobilized a new imperialist strategy of intervention in the Third World, which was based on creating a new offense of violence and conflict in the periphery, along with the displacement of tensions of classes in the center (due to previous limitations of welfare societies and their corporate agreements). We can say with Silver & Arrighi (2001: 53) that:

"The capitalist crisis of the 70's would increase rather than dampen the class consciousness of the global proletariat in expansion. In the 80's and 90's, the crisis of capital becomes, instead, a work crisis, resulting in the disintegration or fundamental restructuration of all organizations of the working class that had been formed and consolidated during the preceding century. "

19 For a debate on the relevance of the differential and contingent use of the term "Third World" today, we recommend reading Ella Shohat (2008: 118-119), in relation to that “with all its problems, the term <> retains a heuristic value for imperialized formations, including those that occur inside the First World. The term <> is especially valuable in wide political-economic terms, while it blurs when we approach the various modulations of the policy in the sphere of culture, in the overlapping and contradictory spaces of identities that blend...the concept of <> is productive when we try to eliminate it, when considered provisional, or even an inadequate term”.

The picture that was raised in Latin America was of a complex social metamorphosis. The intervention into working conditions as a disciplinary model and of deactivation of a politicized working class and a political ideology of social transformation (Drake 1996 2003; Zapata 1992) became a strategic element in the policy of neocolonial and neo- imperial domination in Latin America.

In turn, this process was the main pillar of the modeling of the subjective bases of structural reproduction of the project of "late modernization" as ideology and neo-capitalist utopia (Harvey 2007), as it was an engine of social acceleration, structural heterogeneity, and engagement into a global circuit under (re)construction as a way to increase the flows of transnational capital, and accelerate the processes of productive location in the region20.

"Labor precarity", understood here as a phenomenon modeled by "shock" to a collective political imaginary and as the opening of a condition in the ratio of working-class subject, affected in one way or another the whole occupational structure and labor market. The neoliberal "shock" (Klein 2007) is comprised of processes of: (a) domestication and "rationalization" of discourses and political actors, (b) policies of structural reform and productive restructuring, (c) transformation of the field, rurality, the reality of indigenous peoples and the logics of dispossession of land, (d) the processes of individualization and subjective constitution, (e) the privatization and commodification of services and social rights, and (f) the institutionalization of the fragility of social actors and the democratic exercise.

The synthesis of this modeling process is a new character of power relations (domination and subjection) in the workplace. This process was carried out under a condition of "precarity" which in turn was associated with vulnerability before the exercise of physical and military violence of - in most of the experiences of the countries of South Cone - a dictatorship which obstructed and foreclosed the possibilities of a different and negative

20 In order to see an empirical case one can read the text of Enrique de la Garza (2007) about the crisis of the Sweatshop Model in Mexico; You may also read my text on the process of productive localization and crisis of the salmon industry in Chile (Julián 2013c). All this goes hand in hand with the Marxist thesis of Caputo (2012) on the transformation of spaces of waging and equalization of wages in the periphery and capitalist center.

imaginary (Drake 1996), in a critical-transforming sense, of contestation and resistance to the ongoing hegemonic process.

As it becomes necessary to understand "labor precarity" not only as a phenomenon that affects the modalities of "short term" recruitment, rotation, flexibility and/or in a difference in the level of income, but also from the field of articulation of identities in/with the work, in complex morphology of openings, discontinuities and fragments constituting the heterogeneity of Latin American society (Weller, 2011; 2012; Guadamarra, Hualde & Lopez, 2012).

The latter traveled in the twentieth century from developmental projects entailing extensive social mobilization to the imposition and hegemony of neo-liberalism in a historical process filled with experiments of "modernization", "dependency" and "development" (Del Pozo 2001).

In this story, as we discussed earlier in the thesis of marginality, informality and social exclusion, labor precarity and its introduction in the South is not a new phenomenon, but still, in its neoliberal expression, in the change of power relations and in the workplace, it has changed the positioning of the actors, especially in the field of the organization of workers.

In different contexts, workers have had to rearrange their practices and strategies to deal with this process. The fact is this adaptation has not always been successful, provoking the crisis of trade unions and trade unionism (Zapata 2003: 9), which has been understood as the "exhaustion of speech and union practice, and its difficulties to give satisfactory answers to the challenges posed by global capitalism", which has had an impact on the decline in union membership, the lower participation of unions in labor policies, the weakening of their organizations and the loss of power of collective negotiation.

A series of factors have combined in this phenomenon, which we will develop in depth in Chapter 4 in the case of Chile, where the productive and reproductive changes have hosted the convergence of two phenomena of precarity: job and social precarity.

3.1.- Working Precarity as Social Precarity

The mutation of labor precarity into an extensive condition in the wage nuclei was at the heart of neoliberal policies in the region. These policies had an intended form of expression in scenarios where the cores of organized workers had played an important role in the shaping of governments promoting policies of social welfare and job security (Drake 1996).

This strategy of "development" and economic growth, combined with a project of modernization and productive restructuring (Sotelo 2003), had its historical foundations in particular scenarios of socio-political changes on the continent, which involved in the case of Latin American societies, the collapse of popular government fronts (Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, etc..), which prompted a populist-industrializing matrix based on a model of substitution of imports (1930-1982), and "internationalization of the domestic market" (Guillén 2008).

The generation of this development matrix represented a social-economic change of the conditions of ownership of the means of production and the conditions of social welfare, tied to a new strategy and definition of the role of the state in the peripheral countries of capitalism (Munck 2013).

With the advent of neo-liberalism, the extension of the processes of "social insurance" undertaken by the governments of the time was truncated, with the restoration of the hegemony of the private sector over the state, which had also prevailed in the previous period.

The process of market opening, the movement of goods, services and capitals was encouraged, countering protectionist tendencies that had been affirmed in international trade and capital markets between the '30s and the '70s (Gambina 2003; Arceo 2005).

Following the programs of the IMF and World Bank and through the installation of military dictatorships, the hegemony of the neoliberal project (in Chile and much of the region) began to be constructed, through a policy of economic Shock, privatization and implementation of a global monetarism (Anderson, Sader & Gentili 1999; Therborn 2008).

Neoliberal policies were intended to disrupt production spaces, the place occupied by workers as harmful elements to capital accumulation and as political subjects21. Its weakening was related to a multisystem strategy which through the implementation of labor regulations which eroded their role in labor relations, political repression through state terrorism, murder, disappearance and removal of the most important political leaders of the union movement, and through the introduction of reengineering in production and property, eventually turned it into an agent moldable to the plans of economic restructuring with little responsiveness to neoliberal adjustment. In this sense, neo-liberalism is "a strategy for removing the long political constructions of the twentieth century that had become limits to the transnational capitalist accumulation and to the access to natural resources" (Tapia 2008: 105).

Along the same lines, "social precarity" is associated with the transgression of the workspace, and the reformulation of the forms of reproduction of the everyday and of life. This trend was promoted from a process of vulnerability of security and social protection, and the generation of an array of risk and uncertainty.

Social precarity was a tendency to remove the emerging society of social welfare and "common sense", by means of: (a) privatization of state enterprises, (b) the

21 We will return to this discussion on Chapter Seven about syndicalism during military dictatorship in Chile, according to our objectives of investigation, and the formulation of our hypothesis of investigation joined to the relation between the condition of “precarity” (as condition of synthesis of the relations of mediation in social reproduction) and its action in the space of union strategies.

commodification of public services, (c) the lack state investment in areas such as health, education and energy, (d) the exponential growth of social inequality, unemployment and poverty; and (e) the reduction of wages for the inflation adjustment, with subsequent wage failure for its reproduction.

These two areas in tension (production and reproduction) are in direct tension with the array of precarious work, when recognizing that the commodification of goods of services, social protection, health, education, etc. (Hoehn 2009), turn labor precarity into a central space of articulation between: a) The structural processes of bureaucratization and monetization, which "penetrate the core areas of cultural reproduction, social integration and socialization" (Habermas 2008: 384), and of existence and life, and b) The crisis of the State's role in protection, rights and social security, i.e. as the focus of political and social conflict over "well-being" in neoliberal societies.

The commodification of social goods and the withdrawal of social protection of the State exacerbated a bond of dependence of the workers with respect to income, what Michael Burawoy calls the "second dependency" (Burawoy 1985: 126)22, since by having a character of insufficiency, they fueled poverty and vulnerability, which makes employment and labor assume a central and critical role in social reproduction.

The general destabilization of working conditions, unemployment, informality, labor flexibility, etc, exposed not only the difficulty of sustaining the right to work as a social right and as a way of ensuring living conditions but:have:

a) also hindered the cohesion and increased social polarization, b) increased uncertainty about the ability to anticipate and organize the future c) redefined the trajectories of social mobility, and d) weakened the bonds of integration and social protection, creating a space of vulnerability and social exclusion.

22 For Burawoy, the first dependency is the wage dependency, as long as the second dependency is related to an area of social reproduction. We will analyze this phenomenon in Part 3 of our thesis with the empirical experience of minimum wage in Chile.

This precarity reacts upon the workspace, constituting an "industrial reserve army" more amenable to precarious employment insertion, which is part of Marxian thesis taken up by Klaus Dörre in the formulation of the "new social question”. This is the point at which a wave of labor flexibility is carried out, characterized by the proliferation of informal work and precarious salaried work.

It is in this heterogeneity of workers where the process of precarity takes on a structural dimension of the wage relation as a component of the profit strategy (De la Garza & Neffa 2010: 30), by being articulated with different modeling forces of labor reality, which is manifested in the institutions and rules governing the use and reproduction of the labor force. These are

“included by the systems of selection, recruitment, classification and professional formation of the workforce according to categories; the degree of stability and security or of precarity on the job as the existence or not of an “industrial reserve army”; the systems of control, discipline, and sanction of the employees; the classification of positions and the possibilities of promotions or professional promotions; the duration and configuration of the time of work; and the existence of union instances of representation of the employees and the possibilities of informal or institutional participation in the management to express the needs or claims and formulate proposals joined to the organization of the working processes” (Neffa & De la Garza 2010: 30).

Therefore, our research hypothesis focuses on noting that the changes that have occurred in relation to precarity and labor flexibility, have had no meaning nor are part of a loss of centrality of work in peripheral capitalist societies, but that they have involved a new subjective appropriation of the work.

Here persist a disciplinary exercise of the reproductive condition through social precarity, with a number of contradictions in the social integration/disintegration, but that involve a

subjective content in the work that, although "new" does not involve the break with the objectively dominant condition with reference to the centrality of wage labor.

3.2.- Significance Levels of Labor Precarity

We believe that considering three significant levels (political, economic and cultural), labor precarity should be observed in Latin America as a process of symbolization of-the-lack- thereof and its identification as "lacking" which differs from the subject-work relationships articulated in the North. This involves thinking through three important epistemological issues when developing an analysis of labor precarity, in order to escape the confines of a neo-positivism that lacks the ability to analyze social phenomena in their historical and thus total dimension.

We establish these three necessary points in order to understand how working precarity is manifested in Latin America23:

a) Political Level of precarity.

Labor precarity is manifested as part of a symbolic (political) order, which comes from the identification and criticism for the "lack " of safety, security, certainty, etc.; as protest and rejection of neoliberal policies in the workplace, which is plotted on the confluence of a post-neoliberal counter-reform and post-neoliberal projects (Sader 2008; Battistini 2009), as setting in motion and adequacy in the region. From this it is possible to read the re - installation of the criticism of capitalist exploitation as to the conditions-of-the-exploitation, but not of the exploitation-itself.

Therefore the emergence of a " new " political narrative is projected in reference to work (concrete, but not the abstract) as part of a new ideological matrix of construction of legitimacy to the exercise of the political elite, with an identification process of this

23 We believe that these three dimensions are not dispersed, nor can they be analyzed in separate. The articulation of each is present in our epistemological and sociological proposal of approach of the phenomenon of precarity, both in its enunciation, and dissection that we analytically propose.

discourse by sections of the working class and unionism that rearrange-redirect and mobilize union policy, and "the issue of work”24 itself.

b) Cultural-Epistemological Level

Labor precarity provides new elements for the construction of a theory of intermediate range, dedicated to the characterization of the conditions and "new" phenomena of the world of work, incorporating in representational manner the subjective element of work, in reference to the working condition, with a methodological focus centered on the analysis of narratives and life trajectories.

This theory of intermediate range, when viewed through the ideological prism of modernity, includes at the same time a "humanist" reference in its conceptualization and problematization, which interprets the act of "suffering", associated with perceptions and value judgments such as "decency" and "dignity", and puts the focus on characteristics that would assume normative moral terms of the work. We believe the intermediate scope of this proposal involves a strong neocolonial character by deleting the "marginalized subjects" (women, indigenous, sexual diversity, etc.) for the prevailing model of dominance with a patriarchal-white coding of “suffer”, linked to the political dimension of precarity.

c) Economic-Sociological Level

Finally, labor precarity manifests itself as a phenomenon that contributes to the characterization of the conditions of work from the 80s' decade, but is subsumed within the discussion of the informality of employment and structural condition of the informal sector (Tokman, 2001; Bensusan 2009; Guadamarra, Hualde & Silva, 2012), which generates certain conceptual and interactive decoupling among specialists in the field.

Two contexts (formal and informal) have in diverse ways meant the same situation and construction of the category, which has not been able to define and explain its originality (as "work precarity"), which has pushed the analysis of occupations with a previous status (the neoliberal cycle), and new productive sectors on the continent, especially those mobilized by the process of economic trans-nationalization.

24 Mainly we can observe here the example of “decent work” policies in Latin America (Bensuán 2009), as a model of standardization of work and the problematic of the “quality” of work.

These three levels are intertwined and developed in the case of Latin America with a time context different to what happened in other spatial contexts, especially when understanding and conceptualizing labor precarity as a byproduct of the discursive construction of modernity, and as a result of the "capitalist modernization" neo-liberal process, which is part of the changes in the matrix of social relations of production occurred in the last four decades.

What is intervened in this process are the strategies that cross the "loss" in the description and subjectivity of the precarious world (Butler 2004), and the ascending process of social precarity. As noted by Draibe and Riesco (2009: ix):

“welfare systems in Latin America are still prisoners of what could be called the contemporary malaise: on one side, poverty, inequality, unemployment, social exclusion in its various forms, on the other, limited institutional capacities to overcome, against the powerful movements of local economies in the context of globalization, movements which tend to repeat and deepen those problems and challenges. "

We will observe the strategies that cross the "loss" in the analysis of interviews with Chilean labor leaders in Chapter 10, but first of all we need to identify this mutation of values in the recognition of "labor precarity", which we believe is associated, as we have seen in the case of the marginality thesis, informality and social exclusion, to the project of modernity in Latin America.

2.3 Work Precarity and (Trans) Modernity

The contradictions within the unequal Latin American productive structure have caused, in recent decades, the role of outsourcing, underemployment, sub-occupation, over- qualification, etc. to constitute dominant phenomena in the world of employment, having a great impact on formal and informal activities (Portes 1995; Novick 2001), combined with

the existence of different strata of workers "who could be in an advantageous position within these activities" (Cervantes 2009: 212), and therefore develop new forms of internalization and securing of the new working scenario25. This is the contradictory process which bears a core of precarious survival strategies of the class-which-lives-from- work (Antúnez 2005) in the Latin American context, and the ways to move towards the development of a concept of "labor precarity" from Latin America.

From this reconstructive historical view, the question that arises is: What is the novelty of labor precarity in the Third World?

As Barchiesi suggested in the case of the African continent (2007; 2011), we need to think about the different types of precarity corresponding to different historical patterns of domination, rather than as a closed fact to be empirically verified by simple indicators. But at the same time, we believe we must incorporate an analysis of the logic of unequal development of the world-system (Silver & Arrighi 2000; Wallerstein 2004; Löwy 2010), as a sub-product of the articulation of the capital-work relation, since in its constant mutability, flow and exchange between the values of discipline and domination, as well as on the processes of struggle and tension between classes and social actors.

The diverse and concrete socio-historical formations which articulate the metabolism of capital26, generate a high degree of complexity which requires a historical focus on the phenomenon of “the precarity” which motivates to integrate the (non) originality of the precarity of work and, mainly, of the precarity of work in Latin America, as a factor of diffuse matching and of undetermined and variable development (Palomino 2008).

This problem becomes the core study of change in power relations in the work process. While this core expands crucially currently to the deciphering of the forms of reflexivity, mutual understandings and actions of a (set of) individual(s) in a context of significance of

25 So far this situation marks a loosening of the connection between informality and work precarity (as comparable), along with the dual process of: a) homogenization of strategies of work precarity, and b) the heterogeneity of spaces by/in which work precarity is presented. 26 We believe that this remark is very important epistemologically, politically and reflectively, since it includes the condition of “exploitation” as a relation of construction, fragmentation and tension in the processes of identification, identity and resistances (Julián 2013a).

the labor/capital relationship, which is overlayed by the demands of de-commodification of social relations in the emerging process of "alternative", post-neoliberal and neo- developmentalist in Latin America (Sader 2008), and into the framework of institutional mechanisms of insurance and social protection (Palomino 2008).

From this perspective, the relational positioning of a particular matrix of (re)production, in dialogue with particular elements of a power structure, place the entire social framework of reproducibility in the center of the debate for the understanding of the phenomenon of precarity, from the assumption that "a social situation becomes a social process because social action presupposes and reproduces this regime of power" (Burawoy 1998: 18).

Labor precarity, as part and synthesis of a model of domination, is shown to be an element of production of reality and truth, which crosses the plane of the dominant symbolic and imaginary conformation in the frail processes of identification, recognition and psychic formation of subjects, included in it, of course, work as a social relationship (Julian 2013a), which continues to be crucial in understanding the matrix and to define the relationship of power, history and macrostructures which hold the practices of internalization, objectification and resistance, emerging from/in the condition (and distinction) of (non)precarity.

Under this prism of analysis, precarity of labor plays a contradictory role in its condition, since it can be identified in the Latin American context with two discursive strategies of promotion of a policy of trans-modern synchronization (Düssel 2005), including:

a) A discourse that comes from the center, as part of the process of decomposition of the stable and secure forms of work, which is assumed in the theory of social precarity, and b) A discourse that emerges in Latin America as a form of resistance to the condition of over-exploitation of labor and that relates to the neoliberal hegemony over the past three decades.

The concept of trans-modernity developed by Enrique Düssel (2005; 2005b), aims to:

“indicate that radical novelty called emergence, as from Nothing, alterative Exteriority of the ever Different, of universal cultures in development, which assume the challenges of European-American Modernity, and even of Post- modernity, but which respond from another location".

Trans-modernity revives the discourse duality in which precarity seems to move towards a physical location of the conditions of its (re)production as a social phenomenon. The precarity wraps itself, especially in the workplace, from the identification of the "European worker-signifier", to transpose its meaning to the reality signified by a Latin American identity (of and with the work) in permanent learning and articulation.

This identity that is renewed plastically and dynamically, according to changes in the pattern of accumulation and internal trends of mobilization of political power (civil and sovereign), mobilizes the processes of meaning’s construction and the relationship between society-culture-subject27. These processes are characterized by the circulation and transmission of a network of signifiers to the space of work, which transcend and are interconnected with, for example, the exercise of "citizenship", the convergence and emergence of the socio-political project (class-based or not) and of popular subjects not "represented" in the existing array of domination (Spivak 2003; Sader 2008). These examples tie in with the challenges of modernity for the establishment of "modern subjects", which irritate the legitimacy of structures and economic relations.

From this vision, labor precarity, defined by the European matrix of precarity, questions its homogeneity as a global phenomenon of objectification, since although the cultural assembly of work is extensive (Reygadas 2000), the precarity becomes real from an externality to the workplace, a non-work which cannot find an exact replica in the field of domination and exploitation, in the socio-historical conditions of reproduction of capitalism

27 With some use of the significant <>, as hegemonic, homogeneous and monolithic dimension (Eagleton 2001).

in Latin America conditions. Therefore, from these structural differences emerge the historical and temporal determination of the concept of "precarity" (Girola 2011) to understand its contradictions and its explanatory perspectives in our continent.

From this discussion we believe we must clarify two theses regarding the debate on precarity in Latin America which seek to facilitiate criticism towards stationist and situationist notions of precarity of labor, demonstrating the particular features of this phenomenon in its historical and spatial expression:

1. Precarity of Labor as a symptom of nostalgia. There is a look in retrospect through the approach and the project of modernity in Europe, which when noting labor relations, narrates the precarity from a fetish perspective of the welfare state, before the structural difficulty of capitalism to ensure "full employment", where the latter was understood as a solid condition of work, with important or relatively important wages and especially with social rights and social protection.

2. Precarity of labor as a symptom of frustrated repetition. Specialty conditions, where precarity or precarity emerges as a phenomenon, where it is positioned in the structure of labor markets, and where the debate opened, is marked by the process of "modernization and restructuring of the economy".28 Thus precarity is depicated as a consequence of an "imported modernization" project that ends in (false) failure, with a series of negative and harmful effects on the world of labor.

Precarious employment refers to a debate in a meta-theoretical framework that is deeply influenced by the relationship and the solution to the epistemological problem of distinction between structure and subject.

From this map of distinctions is from which we believe it is necessary to delve, into the dialectical duality of "precarity of labor" located in its uniqueness in Latin America (Düssel

28 Precarity does not have the same characteristics and consequences and effects in all Latin American social formations. But, as we have noted, introduces and produces peculiarities in each one of them.

2005). We think that this duality exist in its “materiality”, as condition given in social relations and social forces that exist in a model of social reproduction (Burawoy 1998), as well as in the process of symbolization, ideological and discursive, which crosses through the forms of identification of “the precarious” and “precarity”, and the construction of “the subaltern, like a political process”.

2.4.- Precarity in Latin America: “A Model in the Making”.

We can conclude that labor precarity is articulated as a specific situation in a complex and multidimensional field, in its morphology and articulation with socio-imaginary practices associated to the reproduction of the unitary totality of society and life. What is the “concrete situation” in which this process of redefinition is implicated today?

We believe that this particular situation is crossed by the micro-physical changes in relationships of power, which necessitate permanent renegotiation of the conditions of the links between submission, cooperation and commitment in the process of social (re)production (Burawoy 1979; 1990). Those situations are expressed graphically in certain features of decomposition of the hegemony of the neoliberal model (Caputo 2012; Araujo 2012), and in the possibilities to generate openings to the configuration of radical imaginaries.

The radical imaginaries imply “new ways of naming” (Spivak 2003), to classify or frame a phenomenon as precarious and provide a definition of “precarity” and “precariousness” (Butler 2004), derived from a counter-hegemonic union (Balibar & Wallerstein 1991) of shared resistance in a space (reconstruction) called the “Third World” (Shohat 2008; Santos 2010).

If we have correctly understood the duality of precarity (labor and work), then it is necssary for politics to understand that “precarity as a shared condition, and precarity as the politically induced condition that would deny equal exposure through a radically unequal distribution of wealth, and differential ways to expose to certain populations,

conceptualized in terms of a racial and national perspective, to a greater violence” (Butler 2004: 50). This perspective places emphasis on the universal theme of precarity, but in a different way, in understanding the complex scenario of uneven and combined development, especially in the North-South (Amin 2010) relationship, and in the history of poor nations of the “Third World” (Prashad 2013).

As indicated by Etcheverría (1989) “from no other historical creation can it be said more properly to be typically modern as of the capitalist mode of reproduction of social wealth, and conversely, no characteristic content of modern life is so essential to define it as capitalism”. Therefore, we believe that the discussion actually focuses on the particularities of this expression of capitalism in peripheral capitalist countries and their "progressive" content or its predatory and harmful content in the configuration of “equal societies” (Atria 2004: 9)

We have tried to generate a debate concerning the particularities of precarity of labor in their expression, conceptual integration, and concerning relevance compared to the structure of employment and the development of Latin American capitalism. Ultimately, we believe that precarity of labor cannot be understood as anything other than a distinct phenomenon in its emergency and contingency, but that has only been recognized as a degradation process that is directly associated with the implantation of neo-liberalism and the erosion of markets of labor, forms of integration and social security, etc., and as a disciplining practice of the workforce in Latin America thus far.

From our perspective, the particularities of the attempts at synchronization and coupling/integration of the Latin American economy force us to think about precarity from a socio-temporal field and its own historical matrix of this condition, and at the same time forces us to problematize it:

a) The classic definitions of social classes in Latin America and its subsequent articulation with the political and economic system (Filgeira 2001) from the

perspective of the installation and standardization of the conditions of employment in relation to the middle class and the working class; b) The characteristics of differentiated areas in the occupational structure which labor precarity permanently and dynamicly (Portes & Hoffman 2003) permeates, and the particular characteristics of subjectivity that are linked to the establishment of these spaces, from an approach of social classes belonging to social formation in Latin American; c) The heterogeneity of precarity as an emerging phenomenon in many occupations where statutes of consecrated employment existed in developmentalist governments, especially in relation to professional occupations (Atria 2004) and the symbolic sense that articulated its "doing" in the project-story of the “modernization” as part of the state apparatus politic; d) The symbolism that crosses the linguistic context in which the concept of "precarity (work)" emerges, is a political, sociological and semiotic problem which exposes the repeatability, copying and arbitrary iterability of the “spell of the concept”" (Jameson 2006), raising challenges to recognize the phenomena of identification, in the field of action of unions, the mobilization of workers and the political system, under/on the premise of “precarity” as negation of a well-being, and e) The continuities and breaks in the phenomenon of labor precarity without being observed from the viewpoint of the processes linked to changes in the model of accumulation of capital, based on the over-exploitation of the workforce - in the capital/labor relation -, generates conditions that could be considered as precarious from a perspective of the present analysis, but that are obviated for placing them into an absolute critical approach with regard to conditions of (re)production of capitalism as a universal organizational project of human life.

It is clear that today labor precarity is one of the elements that strengthens the processes of domination of capital at an international level, in the organization and technological disposition of the employee. The gradual process of reconfiguring meanings of work (Antúnez 2005), the mutation of the forms of discipline and subordination, etc., are

processes that are marked by the action/coercion of various facets of precarity in which spaces of subjectivity are reconfigured.

The core of these structured/structuring relationships is a pacesetter of subjectivities emerging in the world of labor, which position unstable features on a map of conditions that require permanent mutability and its identification with non-identification at work. The location, position, movement, reproduction and trajectory of the subject are the milestones that turn the phenomenon of precarity into a heterogeneity tending towards homogeneity from different channels, speeds and dimensions, but which require an observation of the articulating complexity of the characteristics of its concrete praxis, which is empirically evidential in spaces such as configuration of resistance and counter-hegemony, where unionism and the labor movement may offer some clues about the strategies that articulate the duality of the identification with the condition of precarity, and the generation of critical responses and alternatives to the processes of labor and social precarity.

We believe that a contribution to the study of precarity should no longer be the object of a theoretical-methodological approach of micro-sociology and ethnography, but rather should advance a social-historical field of study that critically and in a reconstructive way accounts for the dispositions and devices installed at work in contemporary Latin America, as wel as the specific forms assumed by abstractions which mobilize late modernity in Latin American capitalism.

Finally, we believe that the proposed debate that we have offered on this text directly involves questions relevant to the activity of social research in the sociology of work in Latin America. Among them, they present the challenge of mobilization of a recursive model of reordering patterns of subjectification with view to the dialectics of power in the process of research and study of the forms of precarity. Here exists a demand for response to the political induction of precarity by social dominant and hegemonic forces (Araujo 2012), from the same exercise of enunciation of “precarity” as activity of recognition of a widespread, heterogeneous and related suffering of a subordinate and oppressed class in Latin America.

Proposals to be developed in order to generate a systemic study of labor precarity and precarity of work seem to recognize and involve a move away from the eclectic and cynical epistemic positions, which conceive of the intervention of politics as disturbing elements in the field and the object under study (Zemelman 1987; Burawoy 1990; 1998).

The issue we have raised in this chapter incurs the challenge of understanding the activity of investigation of working conditions (as “precarious”) as a political exercise requiring a certain transparency in its ethical-value and socio-cultural based notions, in its positioning with respect to:

a) the subject-of-the-precarious as a process of articulation of resistances and of generation of a socio-political dialogue of construction and activation of knowledge (Kalleberg, 2008; Battistini, 2009; Barchiesi, 2011; Lorey, 2012); , and b) an epistemological review focused on questioning the dominant knowledge and the installation of the idea of objectivity that immobilizes knowledge towards an encyclopedic archivist knowledge (Burawoy, 2005; Wallerstein, 2006).

With this, we hope to generate some references, problems and concerns with respect to a debate which, through the critical-reflective legacy of postcolonial studies in social sciences, sociology of work must be able to integrate dialectically in its subject/object of study and research praxis, as part of an epistemic discussion of an expanded concept of work and its (non)centrality in the constitution of the structural heterogeneity of Latin American societies, and the other hand as part of a project to develop an integrated and comprehensive framework for analysis of industrial relations as a whole.

PART III. CHILE AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF WORK. A QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS OF LABOR PRECARITY

Introduction

The global transformations of the last three decades have generated significant changes in the workplace through the articulation of a series of complex mediations as expressed in the permanent changes of productive rates (permanently more accelerated), production de- location, the highest levels of competitiveness, efficiency and productivity, and the policy of “short deadlines” imposed by companies (Sennett 2006: 15-82).

Deregulation, globalization and equity management of firms are the main changes in macro-economic matters. Changes have been forced and have been accompanied by permanent crisis. These changes were initiated in the early 70s', with “the crisis of the international model of fixed exchange rates...coupled with the privatization of pension systems and the deregulation of financial systems in Central Industrialized Countries” which generated a context of “remarkable growth of financial assets and a strengthening of banks and investment funds” (Sanchez 2009: 135).

Its speculative impact is visible in the explosion of liquidity, credit decontrol, exchange rate volatility and stock market volatility. These transformations express the exacerbation of competition and also the advancement of productive internationalization. The most classic interpretations (Harvey 2007; Dumenil & Levi 2004; Katz 2002), which we share, stress that this process – so called economic "financialization" - has been an instrument of capital to restore the rate of profit by increasing exploitation (Katz 2002)29.

29 As for the relationship between finance and the real economy, it is true that great fortunes are made in financial terms in two ways: playing with stock market fluctuations regardless of the productive performance of companies whose shares are purchased, and commitment to currency fluctuations, related to devaluations or re-evaluations of the currencies. In these conditions one cannot argue, as with the classical conceptions, that speculative gains come from the distribution of value generated in production. They are earnings which have behind them values stripped of their objectification, but can still be exchanged through money for objectified values. Money that creates money, said Marx, the fetishism of capital in which it appears as a creator of values (De la Garza. 2001).

Financial capitalism means, in this context, a particular capitalist formation which combines a way of accumulation of capital30 based on a relative predominance of liquidity, with mercantile-flexible models of production, along with devices of regulation (coupling of public discourse with institutional practices) which prioritize the adaptation to the market logic, competitiveness and individuality before the integral principle (Dörre 2009). Like Kim Moody says (2001: 46) “this is the age-old secret behind the global imperative of capitalism. Real capitalist competition is the root of both its crisis and its drive to globalization”.

It is in this dialectic in which the model of flexible production emerges, the process of capitalist expansion, a new spatial division of labor and the new geography of capital, which opens a new era in the history of global capitalism - a history in which Latin America will play an essential role as a new space of mobilization and concentration of the centrifugal forces of the global economy, and for the generation of new regimes of over- exploitation of the labor force which accelerate the recovery process and adjustments to the accumulation of international capital. As noted by Francisco Zapata (2001: 101):

“the de-structuring and restructuring processes allowed establishing the foundations of a new, more efficient and more competitive system in an economically globalized world. The challenge was to deregulate, strengthening market relations, in particular of the factors of production, to eliminate obsolete capacities and free resources that would make restructuring possible”.

The paradigms introduced by transnational companies with the support of reforms and State action, in particular institutional reform and labor law (OIT 2000), served to articulate the restructuring of the world of labor with pre-existing forms of organization and exploitation, formed during the period of the substitution industrialization of imports (ECLAC 2005: 29- 52), which implied a "change of development model, i.e. of the modification of the link

30 The concept of regimes of accumulation represents the idea of a transitional overcoming of barriers of capitalism through institutional means. The Fordist regime arose from political conditions imposed upon capital, however, it also benefited from exogenous factors (period of reconstruction, bipolarity of the world system). Compare Chenais (2004: 217-254).

between accumulation and institutional regulation, context that is identified with the emergence of what the business press calls "the new economy" (Zapata 2001: 101).

The main trends that were consolidated at the international level were: a) fragmentation and globalization of production processes, i.e. a new spatial division of labor processes, whose phases are located in different national territories integrated into new transnational industrial networks; b) the creation of transnational industrial corridors that connect cities and ports selectively c) information technology and communication (ITC) as novelty of the composition of capital and as a vehicle that expands and streamlines the process, breaking barriers of time and space for the mobility of capitals, d) the expansion (in quantity and speed) of the network of transportation e) the growing and unstoppable migrations of labor (including skilled labor) and f) a process of financialization of the economy, with a strategic role of financial capital in the model of accumulation.

In this process, companies

“changed their relationships with banks, its shareholders, the financial system and trade unions. Modernized their administrative structures, changed their communication systems and designed new planning and production systems" (Zapata 2001: 101).

For its part, the State strengthened this process by proceeding to implement reforms to the systems of labor relations, bending labor regulations before the growing diversification of working conditions (including flexibility, precarity and informality) to changes in time/working day (regimes and longer days, combined with jobs by the hour), and in occupational and wage structures by industry, by company and by occupation. Simultaneously they turned to the identification of relationships between companies and their workers, so as to ensure a more robust labor discipline, combined with political reforms implemented by states in relation to securing and consolidating this process.

In this section we propose an introduction to the study of a "new subject-worker", defined from the new precarious labor relations in Chile. To do this we begin in Chapter Four with an introduction to the importance of neoliberal policies in order to understand the labor market and changes in labor precarity in Latin America. In Chapter Five we proceed to a statistical characterization of precarious and flexible work in Chile, according to five dimensions that shape the context of precarious work today. Finally, in the last chapter we perform a statistical diagnosis of five trends in the composition of the union movement with reference to its importance as a strategic actor responding to the process of ongoing labor precarity and to understand its present problematic.

Chapter Four. Chile: Neoliberalism and the Social Precarization Process

Chapter Overview

In the post-war period, Latin America had focused on the influence of the UN and its economic agencies. Following a permanent trend from 1913 onwards of decline in prices of raw materials and steady change (apparent only after the Second War) in the composition of world trade (Furtado 1976), Latin America led a process of industrialization, imports substitution (ISI), and a new development model, according to the sociopolitical changes that developed around the Cold War, which consolidated the crisis of the colonial model (Halperin 1972) and generated new prospects for development in Third World countries (Shoat 2008).

This cycle in Latin America gave birth to an intermediate model of development between developed industrial countries and Third World countries in terms of social indicators “related to nutritional conditions, health, education, housing and other aspects of social development (Furtado 1976: 62). In addition to a transformation in the structure of land ownership, new levels of urbanization, infrastructure and social services emerged (Wynia 1990).

The neo-liberal wave of the 80s’ and 90s’31 took shape in Latin American productive structures, and permeated the restructuring of relations of production and productive models, leading to the emergence of a new economic model under the hegemony of the Washington Consensus tailored "for the proper functioning of capitalism, the free action of market forces, the location of the private sector at the center of economic decisions, fiscal balance and inflation control is essential" (Ramirez 2012: 39).

The process of structural reforms implemented from the Washington Consensus (Harvey 2007), were developed as part of:

“an attempt of the center of capital to regain its rate of earning through access to low cost labor and of the settlement, to this end, of all the obstacles that limited their actions and especially protectionist policies implemented during the previous phase of the international economy by the peripheral economies. The abrupt and profound opening of the latter has dislocated - and in many cases collapsed - its internal market, and forced to center the axle of the process of accumulation in the export market, all of which has a strong impact on a global level, on wages, employment and prices of industrial products" (Arceo 2009: 10).

In this Chapter we seek to demonstrate the relation between the social precarization process and neoliberal politics in Chile. For this objective we concentrate the structure of this Chapter on two levels: First we describe the principal characteristics of the New Productive Structure; then, we concentrate in Chile’s case as a labor precarization paradigm in Latin America, with a general view of this process and reforms in this country in the 70s and 80s.

31 We will understand neo-liberalism as an economic, philosophical and political perspective of the functioning of the economy and of the society based on the principles of classical and neoclassical economic theory, which in the case of Latin America was implemented by applying policies of the Washington Consensus.

4.1.- The New Accumulation Model

The productive structure is reorganized and redefined with the intervention of the state, which promoted the localization process of transnational production and private investment. This process was characterized by different dimensions which markedly redefined the social space:

D Deregulation of transnational investment in the country, accompanied by financial incentives and subsidies to strengthen foreign investment and attract capital, sitting on an extractivist logic. E Environmental deregulation and the commodification of natural resources, which boosted a process of expanding the geographical boundaries previously established in relation to capitalism by norms of protection of natural reserves. F Deregulation and labor flexibility, which caused a structural weakening of the employment relationship, G The creation of infrastructure, telecommunications and connectivity between production areas and fragmented supply chains, and places of export and marketing. H Terms of trade and free trade that facilitated the linking and transfer of technology and products, feeding the installation of productive projects as localized base of a transnational chain of production.

This series of institutional structures mediates the "problematic relationship between local and particular conditions and the universality of the values obtained in the global market...dictating a pattern of uneven geographical development through its concentration and the flows of capital" (Harvey 2001: 51) as a synthesis of relations between social classes, which accelerates the dynamics of regional relations of production linkages, and the expansion ratio of the sector in its geographical limits and limits of colonization of territories (Dörre 2010).

The state is liable to be considered as "residual, focalist and charitable, oriented only to taking care of the poor, abandoning distributive policies as sheltered employment,

progressive tax reforms and social policies that could lead to social solidarity"(Ramirez 2012: 40). This would hinder the extension of the processes of "social insurance" undertaken by the governments of the time.

Latin America did not transform its productive structure "due to the real absence of a production system with its own economic cycle, whose supports would have been the producer of means of production, and consumer and labor markets accordingly" (Sotelo 2003: 20), but this process recognizes a polarization (rather than a convergence) of the production systems, with disarticulations of large and old supply chains replaced by inputs and imported parts, while the "global" dimension of this process "is present in general policies of multinational enterprises and general human resource management doctrines in general. But overall this is adapted by multinationals and especially by modern national companies at local conditions" (De la Garza 2001: 25).

Added to this was the competition between low-wage countries to establish processes of productive localization (Massey 1984) which increased the number of less qualified and precarious manufacturing jobs. This is why manufacturing jobs in the more traditional sectors of production in the central countries are destroyed at a double rate. Through a process of de-territorialization and re-territorialization of production, new channels of trade make imports connecting "developing countries" to developed countries, generating a reduction of jobs and, moreover, forcing companies to improve productivity to remain competitive, settling a mapping and structural dependence of the economy at an international level along such principles.

The basis of a neo-extractivist model (Acosta 2000; 2009; Gudynas 2012) focused on the acquisition and exploitation of natural resources and energy, the relaxation of tariffs, the resignation of taxes, privatization of public services and of strategic companies of the state area, macroeconomic stability and the expansion of exports, etc, fueled the process of expansion of capital and encouraged a widespread tendency toward the plundering of Latin American economies.

Undoubtedly in this process, the installation of neo-liberalism as a set of policies that shaped a new model of accumulation of capital played a strategic role in the diversification, constitution and configuration of the heterogeneity of regional/national spaces, as the implications it has had for occupational and social structures in Latin America have been of "a marked increase in income inequality, the continuing concentration of wealth in the top decile of the population, the rapid expansion of the class of micro-entrepreneurs and the stagnation or increase of proletariat in the informal sector" (Portes & Hoffman 2003: 5). These are some of the trends that will be repeated and will be present in the case of Chilean society, which we will now study in relation to the phenomenon of labor precarity overall.

4.2 Chile: A Paradigm of Labor Precarity

In the case of Chile, neo-liberalism meant a real "capitalist revolution" and not just a process of "structural adjustment" (Martinez 2003: 34). The radical transformation observed in the country beginning in 1973 with the installation of the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet is consistent with the application of a series of measures and policies that have in the meantime come to characterize the model of production in Chile: market and price liberalization depending on supply and demand; trade and financial openness to foreign markets and reduction of the State to a subsidiary role, with a strong process of privatization and monopolistic concentration in some sectors (Malatrassi 2004)32.

What was called «structural adjustment » in fact shifted the center of gravity of economic regulation from the state to the market, thus closing the process of structural social mobility that led to industrialization produced by the public sector since the 1930s (Portes & Hoffman 2003; Espinoza, Barozet & Méndez 2010).

32 The new policy of the state would demonstrate "the ability of management autonomy of technocratic elites of the State with respect to civil society. Underlying this was a new social commitment with entrepreneurship: the decrease of protections and management of prices, although compensated with financial liberalization, market flexibility and export promotion. Similarly, the regulation of the financial statements of central banks was another key signal (e.g. for foreign capital) aimed at demonstrating ability and clearance of the state to address the constant imbalances that an open and peripheral economy faces" (Díaz. 1995).

The policies implemented by a group of advisors called the Chicago Boys, followers of the classical school of Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek, required the action of a military-bureaucratic authoritarian regime in order to implement a set of measures characterized by a context that fed

“the capacity of management autonomy of technocratic elites of the state with respect to civil society. Underlying this was a new social commitment to entrepreneurship: and the decrease of protections and management of prices, although compensated” (Díaz 1995: 167).

The originating expression of neoliberal policies in Chile, installed in times of military dictatorship (1973-1990), as a multidimensional process of productive restructuring and social precarity strategies that transformed the economic and social structure of the country. The main strategies used by the state were:

a) Industrial restructuring with a strong duality in the productive structure: the structure of production that had developed in the previous cycle with a rapid process of industrialization was dismantled, privatized and trans-nationalized in the process of economic liberalization and of sale of state enterprises. The annual average of bankruptcies in the period of 1975-1981 was 277; this figure increased to 810 in 1982.

b) A process of demographic change and of transformation of the socio-productive territories/spaces: the process of selective elimination, exile and asylum, added to the processes of internal rural-urban migration, constituted important processes of demographic redefinition. A population which was growing at 2.39% in 1965 reached 1.71% in 1975 and 1.68% in 1985. In addition to policies of agrarian and housing reform that had changed the habitat and land ownership under the Popular Unity government (original name in Spanish: Unidad Popular, UP) (1970-1973) were suppressed, returning "between 1973 and 1979, one third of these lands to their former owners, while the other two thirds were requested or allocated to

smallholders. Thus, the government of Pinochet was creating a land market that did not exist before, definitely liquidating the large landowning property and making way for other forms of centralization and concentration more typically capitalist" (Diaz 1995 : 158). One should add here the process of urbanization, which involved the growth of cities of 71.3% between 1970 and 1995, with a growth of the urban population from 75% in 1970 to over 84% in 1995, with a resulting process of migration from the countryside to the city (Riesco 1998). c) The installation a model of primitive accumulation of capital that articulates a new economic geography: with the dispossession of land, many farmers had to leave the land where they lived for generations in order to move to urban centers and become inserted into modern economic and social structures, to thicken the peripheral cones of cities and the informal sector of the economy. Thus, despite low population growth, the employed population doubled from 2.7 million in 1970 to 5.4 million in 1997 (Riesco 1998). d) The strong and unregulated introduction of transnational capital and the privatization of the public system as part of a new international division of labor: the dispossession suffered by the Chilean State at the hands of the military dictatorship involved ports, oil companies, water companies and electricity companies (as well as a number of industries that had been occupied by workers and were placed under "workers control" during the government of Popular Unity) (Drake 1996; Gaudichaud 2003). e) The configuration of new social actors: the weakening of the landowning oligarchy (Diaz 1992), the introduction of a precarious national capitalist class which profited from the privatization of the public sector, the creation of monopolistic economic groups and the strengthening of transnational capital, the map of economic actors left the relationship between labor and capital and between state and society symmetrically articulated (Fazio 2005).

f) The myth of the subsidizing state: The state maintained the strategic dominance of relative prices of the economy. Indeed, through the systematic modification of the exchange rate, interest rates, government rates, agricultural prices, the State affects the whole structure of prices and profits in the economy. No less significant is the coercive state regulation of wages. Through the simple expedient of limiting unionization and collective bargaining spaces (Lira & Rojas 2009) a control of wages becomes possible, especially those of large sectors of precarious workers33 (Díaz 1995).

h) Financialization and financial collapse: this situation arose from continuous bank loans to insolvent customers (mostly companies related or associated to the owners of banks). This situation exploded in early 1983 when the government took over three banks, intervened in five major commercial banks, while the Central Bank had to provide extensive credits to the rest in order to provide them with short- term liquidity, as "bad portfolios" or bad loans in the banking system exceeded by three to four times the system's equity.

i) A structural heterogeneity and multidimensional inequality: inequalities exhibited in social, political, economic, ethnic and gender matter, with serious consequences and impacts on matters relating to social welfare (Diaz 1995; ECLAC 2010), which were radicalized in the era of military dictatorship and contributed to a process of stabilization with concerted governments.

This hegemonic form, and the transformation of the process of accumulation, is expressed in the project of policies of adjustment and productive restructuring, combined with the policies of labor flexibility enacted in 1979 (Sotelo 2003; Diaz 1995; Soto 2008), which form the basis of a "social reorganization which meant, among other phenomena, a) the

33 Until 1983 the government imposed an automatic salary readjustment. Currently, coercive regulation operates through the Labor Plan of 1979, which we will discuss later. Minimum wages are still being readjusted in a spaced manner, such that between 1981 and 1989 they lagged in comparison to average wages.

emergence of corporate actors and the dissolution of popular social actors and b) changes in cultural policies of social and political actors" (Garretón 2009: 192).

4.2.1.- Neo-Liberalism and State Reforms

State strategies of social precarity were carried out by means of seven "modernizations", which constitute the core of the capitalist revolution of the late 70s. These accelerated as part of a political strategy relating to the activity of the State, generating new tensions between the space of production and social reproduction. According to Hoehn (2005) these seven modernizations were:

a) The Labor Reform: the Labor Plan of José Piñera Echenique - a landmark reform of the Labor Code, in place since 1924 and the result of five decades of union struggle - phased out all the triumphs of the labor movement with respect to labor and union rights, deregulating and making the labor market more flexible, accompanied by repressive, punitive and debilitating policies regarding union activity.

b) The Pension Reform: creation of a system of private management of pension funds (AFP). The Pension Reform - another initiative of the Minister Piñera - proposed to deliver pension funds of workers to large conglomerates for speculative use.

c) Health Reform: Pursued two main objectives: reduce state contributions to the maintenance of the system and open a new source of accumulation for entrepreneurs. Reforms to the law of curative medicine included the decentralization of health facilities and the creation of Health Insurance Institutions (ISAPRE). (Aedo 2001).

d) Educational Reform: In the educational field, this policy was expressed in the decentralization of schools and the dismemberment of the University of Chile, introducing private institutions into the university system as well as the privatization of the technical-professional education and of higher education (Mira 2011).

e) Agricultural reform: modernization of agriculture was basically the liberalization of the sector and its opening to the outside, incorporating neo-liberal policies into categories hitherto characterized by protectionism.

f) The Political-Justice Reform: The Constitution of 1980 contains a series of constitutional restrictions that seek to prevent the exercise of popular sovereignty, such as the Laws of Rated Quorum (approval by two thirds parliament), appointment of senators and senators for life, tenure of Commanders in Chief, and the Armed Forces as a guarantor of the institutions, the binomial electoral system, the establishment of the Constitutional Court and the National Security Council (COSENA in Spanish).

g) The Reform of Regional Distribution: The military government endorsed a highly decentralizing discourse (certainly a contradiction in itself) and, on the other hand, its economic strategy created two new social actors in the country which took up the regionalist discourse of decentralization: new entrepreneurs related to businesses of exportation of natural resources (scattered in the territory) and new scholars of the newly created regional universities (Boisier 2003).

With this set of reforms, two opposite trends regarding the historical shift of the role of the state occur: on the one hand, an increase in the capacity of the state to implement coherent macroeconomic policies is noted, which is the simplification and unification of exchange and capital markets in terms of establishing unique and consistent signals to economic agents; while on the other hand, a decline and abandonment on the part of the state in terms of industrial and technological policies or strategies of productive development can be distinguished34.

In terms of labor, the labor reform of 1979 will be one of the pillars of the new architecture of work in Chile, marked by the institutionalization of precarity and labor flexibility.

4.2.2.- The New Architecture of Work

34 This did not prevent compensatory policies for sectors or regions suffering from acute competitive lags or structural delays.

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In Chile, the changes which occurred in the 70s and 80s redefined the complete architecture of the social structure and, of course, structure of work. The phenomena associated with unemployment, the explosion of social inequalities, poverty and homelessness, etc., gave way to the acceleration of social polarization (Martínez 2003). According to Ramos (2000: 1704-1705) the new economic model installed a new dynamic of accumulation, based on "price stabilization, liberalization, privatization and guidance to the international market", which at the same time required a second generation of reforms, which would require "more privatization, liberalization (of labor markets) and a low tax expenditure" (Ramos 2000: 1707)35.

In this situation of polarization and social inequality, and of duality of the economic structure, factors of gender discrimination and racial and ethnic discrimination (Sepúlveda 2010) also configure a society modeled by complex problems of inequity (Atria 2004).

In this context, employment and labor pose a strategic centrality for the (re)production of this social structure. Neo-liberal reforms "of the second generation" (Garcia 2003) dislocated and transformed the labor market. The consequences of these reforms were the modeling a "new world of work", marked by the phenomena of precarity and labor flexibility (Soto 2008), the consolidation of informality and permanent unemployment of a segment of the population.

After disarticulation of the labor protectionist legislation (1973), a period of de facto de- regularization was imposed by means of a military dictatorship with protectionist legislation (1973-1978), characterized by strong union repression36 but marked by the continuity of the working legislation of 1973. The labor code governing the country since 1979 institutionalized the extreme liberalization of labor relations, and produced a radical

35 Ramos (2000) will insist on the causes of slow growth in the first decade of this New Economic Model (NEM), and its social consequences. He views the two central flaws of neo/liberalism in financial deregulation and decrease of returns. 36 “Without changing the rules regarding their organizations, its action was completely limited during practice. Moreover, with the collective bargaining prohibition, there was no possibility for a legal strike” (Mazela & Romanguera 2001: 3).

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restructuring of the Chilean labor system. Strategies of insertion into the labor market will be provided especially by short-term contracts; recruitments are loaded with a disciplinary character and of control of the organization of workers, with psychological processes of "evaluation" and monitoring, with a professional apparatus for conflict management; mobility levels go beyond the criteria of meritocracy and upward mobility is limited to certain occupations (mainly of the public sector)37, in an economy that is based on its "comparative advantages" in terms of wages and labor flexibility.

The Chilean labor market is thus traversed by a series of phenomena that shape its regional particularity (Salinero 2006; Coloma & Rojas 2000; Zapata 2002; Mizala & Romanguera 2001): a) the "unemployment indicators are comparatively low compared to the region, showing a rather focused structural unemployment in certain more vulnerable sectors and with young people" (Soto, Espinoza & Gómez 2008: 19).

b) Soon, the country witnesses the appearance of labor outsourcing and work at home, the latter of which partially blurs the boundaries of dependent wage labor and incorporating in some cases elements of such work.

c) The second half of the seventies witnesses a massive increase in seasonal jobs, associated with export products like wood and fruit, and - particularly in this last activity - expansion of the labor supply driven by wage discrimination on the labor market according to sex and the female counter-cyclical impulse in the search for a job.

d) There is also a proliferation of part-time jobs, which range from consensual flexibility (for family, educational reasons etc.) to underemployment.

This has generated a Labor Outlook marked by different phenomena of exclusion of the labor market and high volatility as main characteristics; and with high inequality within and outside the labor market, showing "more flexible contractual relationships, sometimes

37 As indicated by Espinoza, Barozet & Méndez (2010:4) “the apparent mobility within popular sectors and the middle classes has a tendency towards rigidity, while the distance between the poles of the social structure continues to increase”.

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involving its "de-laborization", a minor intervention through instruments such as minimum wages, and falling levels of unionization and collective bargaining coverage" (Weller 2011: 36). All these strategies have consolidated heterogeneity of types and categories of jobs that have been created from the changes and continuities in the productive matrix, depending on the regions and productive sectors, presenting features that are related to the explosion of growth of precarious and flexible work.

The political changes that took place in Chile, and their reading through symptomatic signs displayed until the completion of the cycle of this study (2010), aggrevate the tendency to a highly conflictual relationship between Labor and the Market, placing the state as a major actor on the field throughintervenions into existing labor relations/conditions, and assuming a strategic space in the plane of the adversarial relationship between welfare and social precarity.

In order to meet this objective, a plan was developed at different levels in order to chart a new stage on the work plane. At a first level the workspace was intervened into, during which companies proceeded to implement reforms to the systems of labor relations, increasingly diversifying working conditions, moving between flexibility, precarity and informality, and alternating with changes in times and days of work, characterized particularly by schemes and longer days and the overcrowding of temporary jobs.

The greatest power of business and management, given the sociopolitical context, allows them to redesign models of compensation, to make them more flexible, and to impose a new model of consent in the workplace (Burawoy 1985), which entailed mechanisms of punishment and surveillance which were promoted in most cases via a despotic logic within businesses.

Moreover, on a second level linked to the institutional space of the state apparatus (Burawoy 1985), labor law resorted to individualization and fragmentation of relations between firms and their workers, so as to ensure a more robust disciplining of labor,

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combined with political reforms implemented by the State in order to secure, consolidate and perpetuate this process.

The synthesis of both levels was reflected in the sphere of union organization. The weakening of trade union structures, through their banning, fragmentation and decentralization, was accompanied by the installation of a violent policy regime by the state, military repression and political persecution against the main trade union leaders and trade unions in the country.

Finally this process was synthesized in the Labor Plan of 1979, which contained among its features the consecration of a new system of de-protection and vulnerability of workers, in which workers experienced both the reduction and limitation of their collective rights (even against international guidelines on the subject), as a crystallization of flexible employment relations in the individual relationship of the employee to the employer.

The consequences of this process could be summarized as follows: a) The collective imaginary of the working class38, where the disciplinary internalization of the naturalization of unstable employment, marked by vulnerability, labor precarity and de-protection39, and b) The increase of the indexes of labor productivity40 toward an asymmetric model of working relations, where the worker is exposed to the will of the employer, and disciplinary barriers to collective rights of the workers imposed by the army41.

38 This issue is central to our investigation, and is developed with empirical detail in Chapters Seven and Ten. 39 We will analyze in detail the data referring to these phenomena in the next Chapter about Work Precarity. 40 According to the study of Vergara (2005: 289 “the average productivity of the work in Chile increased in average by 0,9% per year during 1962-1985 and in 3,8% during 1986-2000”, and although associated to other variables indicated by the study, they still influence the forms of intensification of the production and valuation of the human resource (labor) in relation to capital. 41 This point is part of what we will revise in Chapter Nine, which corresponds to the analysis of interviews conducted to 22 union workers in Chile.

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Together these phenomena when interacting multi-systemically in the workspace impede and obstruct models of redistribution and reform in the area of labor relations, which constitutes the matrix of creation of a new core of workers characterized by the precarity of their jobs and the condition of poverty and insufficiency associated with their income42.

Below we will try to provide some information about current labor precarity in Chile, which will allow us to: a) generate a sketch of the map of conditions and relations in which trade unionism develops in Chile and b) consider the basis of the labor precarity in relation to social precarity.

42 For example, the study of Harald Beyer (2000) indicates that the source of inequality of income in Chile is the inequality of income at work and not inequality of capital.

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Chapter Five: Statistical History of the Dimensions of Labor Precarity

Chapter Overview

In the previous chapter we have generated a synthetic proposal for the multidimensional nature of labor precarity, according to the existence of four cross-cutting dimensions in the exposure of the phenomenon in the Global North and South. We are referring to: a) Instability; b) Insecurity; c) Insufficiency and d) Working Conditions43.

In this sense, it is difficult to imagine a scenario of "decent work", as defined by the ILO44, since this only exists for a privileged few who maintain permanent full-time employment contracts (Henríquez & Riquelme 2006), which in turn is one of the topics discussed by Munck (2013: 759) regarding "the formalization of employment" in reference to labor precarity in the Global South.

In that same direction, the ILO (2009) recommended in its "Guide to the New Employment Indicators of the Millennium Development Goals" establishing a series of indicators to measure "decent work" in a simple way via ongoing monitoring of labor markets. In the case of Chile, the difficulties in accomplishing the objectives are related to the pertinence of indicators with view to the respective analysis of employment statistics institutions, and with government policies on labor.

Currently the dimensions of labor precarity – which we have identified in our theoretical discussion above – are manifested in the Chilean labor market to a very high degree. Below we present some statistical indicators of employment in Chile, according to the dimensions

43 See Chapter 2, Section 2.4 Synthesis. A multi-dimension of work precarity, which shows a conclusion of the revision of our theoretical frame. 44 Decent work constitutes a historical objective of the ILO: employment and work regulation. Ghai (2005) indicates that decent work must comply with the following characteristics: 1) that it can be freely chosen and that there is no discrimination during selection (whether for sex, nationality, and/or race/ethnicity); 2) that there are measure for the protection of health of the workers; 3) that there is liberty of association and unionization as well as free access to collective negotiation; 4) that there is a minimum of social security; 5) that tripartism and social dialogue are guaranteed.

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that we have identified in the theoretical debate, in order to quantify the structural importance gained by labor precarity in the past two decades.

5.1.- Labor Precarity and Temporary Jobs

The 1998 Labor Survey (ENCLA), conducted by the Research Department of the Directorate of Labor, indicates that in that year 81.2% of workers had a permanent contract. This occurred in a context of economic crisis, but still indicated that 4 of every 5 workers in Chile had a stable employment contract. This contrasts with the following measurements of ENCLA in 2002 (79.2%) 2004 (77.1%) 2006 (70%) and 2008 (71.8%).

Fixed-term workers in 2004 represented 12.8% of the total workforce, while in 2006 down to 11.5%, with a significant increase in project-related contracts (or per task completed), which passed from 8 9% in 2004 to 13.7% in 2006, and fees 1.8% to 4.8% in 2006. This trend is confirmed by the results of the 2008 Labor Survey, which states that the expansion of these types of contracts went from 20.5% total in 2002 to 30% in 2006, then to slightly lower levels of 27.8% in 2008. The results of the survey indicate that one in three contract workers in Chile have a job with a temporary contract.

This type of temporary jobs, representing 22.9% on 2004 of the jobs with contract in Chile, was manifested unevenly according to: 1) The size of companies45, 2) gender status, 3) Productive sector, and 4) the region. In the case of large companies the average was exceeded by 23.4% in these three categories, with the median being 24.9%. Temporary jobs reached 30% of the workforce in 2006, showing a general decline of permanent contracts across the formal economic structure. The Large companies had an average of 31.3% temporary jobs, and medium companies 34,1%46.

45 In Chile, the Ministry of Development and Planning defines microenterprises as companies with 1-9 employees, small business enterprises with 10 to 49 workers (the median possessing 50 to 199), and large enterprises those with 200 and more. 46 “If we add to this that the companies have reported that 4.5% of its workforce provides services in the form of fees, such form of bond being able to cover an employment relationship under the disguise of a provision of services involving the absence of a relationship of subordination and dependence, there appears to be sufficient evidence that in these cases, although it is a small percentage of the total workforce, it

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Precarity has become a major factor for one-third of the working population in Chile. This is expressed on the results of the Survey of Perceptions of Employee Relations and Equity in Chile, conducted by the Council of Equity and Work, which notes that in 2008, 32% of workers thought they could lose their job in the next 6 months47. Surely these results are associated with the impact of the global economic crisis in Chile, but nonetheless exhibit a direct relationship between perceptions and actual working conditions.

If we add to this the results of the indicator of labor stability found in ENCLA 2004 which indicates that 42.5% of the labor force had no more than 3 years of seniority in the company (which cannot be contrasted with the results of the 2006 since the indicator was not applied), we have a new element to consider in the weakening of temporary bonds at work. This is confirmed by the ILO in its report on working conditions in 2004, which points to Chile as one of the countries with higher labor turnover in Latin America (and the world), with an average tenure of 5.5 years, a percentage of workers with tenure of less than one year of 34.5%, and a percentage of workers with tenure over 10 years of 18.8%.

Another important topic is the relation between gender and precarity. In Chile, 24.7% of women in 2004 had temporary type contracts, increasing to 25.6% in 2006. Permanent contracts, in percentage terms, are feminized, with 74.7%, in relation to 68.2% for males. However, perceptions regarding women having more difficulties than men in finding work are quite high (82% of people).

In general terms "workers with tenure of 1-5 years go from a share of 35.9% in 2002 to 40.8% in 2004, and fall to 37.4% in 2006. Meanwhile, workers with tenure of 5-10 years show a clear downward trend "(ILO / Chile Quality 2009: 16) from a 23.7% in 2002 to 22.2% in 2004, and 17.9% in 2006 (ENCLA 2002 2004 2006). accounts for a way to cope with labor costs which represent for companies the obligations derived from an individual work contract" ENCLA 2006 47 Those who work in companies with fewer than 200 workers are those who perceive greater job precarity (37% of workers in firms with 10 to 49 employees, 34% of workers in firms with fewer than 10 employees). Workers in the agricultural sector (45%) are those who think they can lose their job in the next 6 months.

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As for productive sectors, it is clear that mining is the sector with the highest percentage of permanent contracts (97.2% in 2004, but with a significant drop to 82.2% in 2006), and manufacturing industries (metal and non-metallic) which in 2004 reached 84.1%, and in 2006 grew to 88.8%, along with transportation, storage and communications which reached an 86.6% in the same year with a rise of 7.7%.

Additionally, the precarity of employment in the social service, community and personal sectors well exceeds the overall average of temporary contracts, with 58.9% in 2004 and 27.2% in 200648, with a drop of 31,7%49.

This tendency towards flexibility in permanent contracts is confirmed in ENCLA 2008, where it is possible to identify the indifference of employers to keeping their workers in their jobs, as 21.4% of workers have not worked on the company with contract for over a year, while 29.2% are between 1 and 3 years with the company. This gives us a full 50.6% of workers who do not have tenure, by indefinite contract, of more than three years in an enterprise. Thus, the Chilean labor market is characterized by a high degree of labor precarity.

This can be attributed to: a) Occupational and social mobility, from competitiveness of the workers in search of better prospects, and/or b) business strategies and flexibility of dismissal, with little retention of employees.

In this sense, it can be seen that both criteria of precarity show uncertainty about the constrictive forces of the labor market and business practices within the wage sector of the occupied. It is therefore the case that:

48 ENCLA 2006 considered the category of Services of 2004 as unbundled, it was divided in the Sectors of Social Services and health services (with 16.2% of temporary jobs), the sector Other Social Services (with 24.4%), and Education (with 41%). 49 Additionally the case of the construction sector stands out with 52.7% in 2004 and 74.2% in 2006, with an increase of 36.3%, and Teaching with 41.2% of temporary jobs in 2006.

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“vulnerability of employment in Chile is manifested not as a process of expulsion from the formal to the informal sector of the economy, but as the increasing segmentation within the formal sector among workers who enjoy relatively stable and protected jobs, and those who work in conditions of greater precarity and vulnerability” (Soto, Espinoza & Gómez 2008: 19).

This phenomenon is explained by statistics on the causes of termination of contract, which indicate that by the year 2008, voluntary waivers reached 15.7%, while those of mutual agreement reached 2.5%. Furthermore it is stated that 93% of contract terminations in Chile do not include rights to compensation, and to access it, the worker needs to judicially claim some sort of compensation, which is quite unlikely to be received as it involves a legal process of at least 6 months of processing (Caamaño 2007). This last figure accounts for the lack of protection to which the worker is subject.

5.2.- De-Protection and Individualization of the Labor Relationship

The tendency to hire for one year (see temporary contracts), or to finalize permanent contracts within a year, would be generated by a flexible model of dismissal, and which, moreover, is not liable for compensation by the employer. This trend has been strengthened as demonstrated statistically, but is reaffirmed when observing the amounts of permanent contracts in the last 12 months with respect to settlements: an average of 26.5% of permanent contracts held and 25.8% settled (ENCLA 2008). This trend is part of the logic of "short terms" (Sennett 2006: 34-40) which not only pushes organizations to adapt quickly to changes in the market, but promotes labor precarity as a logic of competition and self-exploitation between workers.

Another issue that problematizes the results discussed above is the existence of non- contract employees. According to results of survey Socioeconomic Characterization (CASEN) 2003, a survey of the socio-economic characteristics of households, 25% of workers fid themselves in this situation, in contrast to the data observed in ENCLA, which is based primarily on data from employers, thus obscuring these illegal situations.

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As for de-protection, it is evident from three different measures in regulation and labor law:

1) Unemployment Insurance: a system of contributions created in 2002. It is a mandatory savings system for dependent workers. Insurance is financed by tripartite funding, establishing a contribution equal to 3% of the monthly salary of the employee, the amount of which 0.6% is paid by the worker and 2.4 by the employer (Aravena & Nuñez 2011: 123-124). It is also accompanied by a tax contribution amount set in Monthly Tax Units (UTMs) provided by the Treasury, equivalent to UTM 32,256 annually during the first six years and UTM 18,816 monthly which fund a "solidarity" component. By having such a low system of compensations in Chile50, significant rotation of jobs and flexibility in hiring and dismissal, unemployment insurance does not respond to the need to become an economic cushion of worker independence in search of a better job, despite the growth in coverage of employed population51. According to the Superintendence of Pensions (SP), in terms of coverage, unemployment insurance in June 2009 reached 6,165,488 affiliate employees, while in the same month of the previous year it reached 5,683,430 employees, while the average annual growth rate from 2003 to 2009 of members was 28.5%, however, this rate gradually decreases (SP 2009: 53). Regarding the distribution of contributors by stretches of taxable income, in June 2009, 57% of contributors had a taxable income lower than $ 300,000 (U.S. $ 600) (SP 2009: 58).

2) Compensation for years of service: are contemplated by dismissal through Article No. 161 of the Labor Code, which defends "company reasons". The compensation

50 According to the SOL Foundation, using "data of the last Casen survey (2011), 50% of Chilean workers earn less than $ 251,620 (U.S. $ 503), and nearly 500,000 workers are poor (which exceed a million if the line of poverty is updated)". Newspaper El Mostrador. 11/07/2013. 51 According to the Superintendence of Pensions, in terms of coverage, unemployment insurance in June 2009 reached 6,165,488 union members, while at the same month of the previous year it reached 5,683,430, while the average annual growth rate from 2003 to 2009 members is of 28.5%. However, this rate gradually decreases as the Insurance proceeds in the transition process (SPS 2009: 53). Regarding the distribution of contributors by stretches of taxable income, in June 2009, 57% of contributors had a taxable income lower than $300,000 (U.S. $ 600) (SPS 2009: 58).

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is conducted in the form of payment of a monthly salary for each year of service to the company, with a limit of 11 years. Still, as pointed out by the 2011 Labor Survey, 75 % of workers have a permanent contract, which is a result of a downward trend in the last decade. While, for example, data from the Employment Survey of the National Institute of Statistics for the three months from May to July 2011 indicated that contracts of limited duration between salaried workers corresponded to 28.9%, exhibiting sustained growth of the trend to hire on fixed terms and of high turnover and fragility of the employment relationship52, while the period from January to March of 2013 exhibited that workers without employment contracts reached 18.3% of the total employees, meaning 1,078,830 workers.

3) The retirement system: wage dependency is supported by a system of non- mandatory retirement from 60 years for women and 65 for men. The pension system encourages the extension of working life. This system is based on compulsory private capitalization of 10% of the salary, which is deposited in individual savings accounts or is deposited in personal savings accounts, managed by private institutions (Pension Fund Administrators or AFP’s). This model installed in 1980 and "perfected" by Law 20,255 of Pension Reform in 200853, left as a result the vulnerability to the condition of old age in the middle and lower economic strata, which is represented by the amounts obtained under the administration of pensions. The results show that, on average, pensions in Chile reached $179 thousand pesos (U$ 358); while 60% of workers have less than 150 pesos ($300) monthly pension.

While according to the International Labor Organization (ILO 2013), in Latin America more than 95 million workers are informally employed, the expulsion of the formal labor market of a segment of workers remains buffered by a zone of work without security and social protection (Assef 2005, Portes & Hoffman 2003). In aggregate, the evolution of informality in Latin America shows a growth of 47.8% in 1990 to 48.5%, while formal precarious employees grew from 11% in 1990 to 15.1% in 2008 (Tokman 2010). In the

52 See previous section. 5.1. Labor Precarity and Temporary Jobs. 53 See Section 3.2.1 - Neo-Liberalism and State Reforms.

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case of Chile, figures show that 37.7% of workers in 2009 worked without any social security, and in 2012 this figure reached 40% (Bernales 2013).

This can be backed up with data from the NENE corresponding to the quarter April-June of 2011, which states that only 38.9% of the employed, 2.903.520, have protected employment (December-February 2011 quarter was 43.1%), i.e. written, permanent contract, settlement of salary and pension contributions, health and unemployment insurance.

5.3.- Unemployment, Precarity and Exclusion from the Labor Market

During the period of dictatorship, unemployment represented a major threat to social cohesion. The rate of unemployment rose from 5.3% in 1973 to 21.8% in 1982. In 1983 it reached 31.3%, when added to the 18.7% of open unemployment, the jobs created by the emergency employment programs54, reaching the highest rate of unemployment in the recorded history of Chile.

In the 90s, the unemployment rate declined from 7.8% in 1990 to 6.2% in 1998. It took about 10 years of growth above 5% and 7 years of positive output gaps before reaching levels of unemployment close to 6%. Unemployment grew sharply and in jumps as a product of, among other factors, the Asian crisis and the slowdown in economic activity, falling to 9.8% in 1999, and decreasing to 9.2% in 2000. With a an average product gap of - 2.5% between 1999 and 2002, unemployment rose by about 3 percentage points with respect to pre-crisis levels.

Nevertheless, the work of Martinez, Morales and Valdes (2001) concludes that the elasticity of employment-product did not decline during the 1986-2000 period by effect of

54 An existing program of unemployment compensation covered only 15% of the unemployed, so a couple of public employment programs (Minimum Employment Program and Program of Employment of Heads of Household) were created to channel unemployment benefits, in which nearly 500,000 people joined in 1982-83. During the years of highest recession then, more than 50% of the unemployed received no subsidy, 30% received an amount equal to 60% of net minimum income (POJH), and the remaining 20% received a subsidy equivalent to 30 % of the net minimum income (PEM).

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the evolution of the prices of different inputs. As for 2002, the growth of unemployment was concentrated in:

“young workers (particularly those between 18 and 25 years) with a higher educational level (completed high school, technical training centers, professional institutes and to a lesser extent university studies). The growth in the unemployment rate of people with high educational levels and limited work experience explains the 41% increase in the unemployment rate” (Micco; Cowan; Mizala; Pagés; Romaguera 2003: 2).

In the year 2006, ECLAC (2007: 133) recorded that the labor situation in Chile "improved thanks to a significant increase in formal employment, moderate increases in real wages and a drop in the unemployment rate from 9.2% to 7.7 %". On the other hand there are studies that show a substantial cyclical decline in labor demand, arguing that "with a drop in the demand of labor (caused by a fall in the demand for assets), wages in Chile do not adjust to the decrease, so the amount of employment demanded is reduced”. I.e. the collection is set to "elucidate the causes of wage rigidity in Chile" as an explanation of unemployment (Marinakis 2005: 2), which is typical of the neoliberal policies of operative constriction (Boltanski & Chiapello 2006: 33 -34), to justify the impoverishment of the wage.

In the context of the economic crisis of 2008-2009, the unemployment rate went from a 7.1% average in 2007 to 7.8% in 200855 and 9.7% in 2009. This is because although the force of labor was increased by 3.7%, employment increased in 3.0%, which resulted in the unemployed population growing at higher rates despite increased employment. Unemployment increased 13.3% during 2008, constituting the first increase of the annual average of unemployment since 2004 (INE National Institute of Statistics 2009).

55 This is because while the force of labor increased by 3.7%, employment increased by 3.0% which meant that despite increased employment, the unemployed population grew at higher rates. Unemployment increased 13.3% during 2008, constituting the first increase of the annual average of unemployment since 2004 (INE National Institute of Statistics 2009).

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In quantitative terms, we may say that between 2009 and 2011 structural unemployment was intensified, and was accompanied by hidden unemployment and the phenomenon of underemployment. The figures released by the INE for the July-September 2010 quarter, evidenced a decrease in unemployment, which reached a rate of 8%. However, the unemployment rate would increase dramatically if those who work part time but are available to work full-time (sub-employment); and the "discouraged" who got tired of looking for a job, but if offered a position and an employment contract would immediately accept it (hidden unemployment), were considered. When incorporating both groups we obtain a "comprehensive unemployment rate", which approaches 13.2%. This implies that the number of unemployed people exceeds 1.1 million, or at least exhibits the difficulties of full and protected labor integration (Sol Foundation 2011).

In 2011, the Chilean economy grew by an average 6%, which has been accompanied by a recovery in employment and occupation (in different forms), with the growth of wage labor, which was increased by 289 thousand people between January to March 2010 and September-November 2011, while unemployment reached an unemployment rate of 7% in December 2011, showing a variation of the unemployment rate of -14.9% in the last 12 months56. Such phenomena have been part of the construction of a debate about whether we are facing a case of "full employment" or not57. This debate neglects integration in analysis of new categories present in the NENE, which are found primarily in emerging phenomena of high concentration of underemployment, coupled with unemployment rates of 6.7% (INE 2012) and the exclusion, disaffiliation and discouragement from the labor market.

On the other hand, one can observe a destruction of nearly 20,000 salaried jobs in 2010, while 95% of salaried jobs created (between 2010 and 2011) were outsourced jobs. Looking in detail at what has happened with these types of jobs in recent times, it appears

56 The indexes presented in 2007 (7%) were matched by economic growth experimented from the global demand for raw materials, far from the cycle launched by the Asian crisis (1997-1999), which in 1999 reached 12.9% of unemployment 57 Full employment is understood as labor demand being equal to labor supply, with an unemployment rate less than or equal to 6%, and a real wage level. In this situation there would be only frictional unemployment, that is, it would be given by an imperfection in the labor market that the market could not solve.

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that full-time positions are increasingly replaced by part-time jobs, indicating a significant increase in underemployment; this replicates trends already observed with respect to the evolution of permanent contracts in ENCLA (1998-2008). Finally, over 20% of private wage workers are not paid their pension contributions.

We must add that calculating an Integral Unemployment Rate (Sol Foundation 2011), including in it open or officially declared unemployment by the government (7.2%) as well as hidden unemployment and underemployment equivalent to unemployment, accounts for more than one million unemployed people in Chile. This same phenomenon is combined with employment problems today, where 45% of the population old enough to work has employment problems, linked to informal workers, unprotected unstable workers (33%), and to those under pressure to become precarious workers, providing models of hidden and informal unemployment (11%) (Sol Foundation 2011).

Unemployment is concentrated, according to New Income Supplement Survey (NESI), in households in the lower quintile (21.8%) and in the second lowest quintile (7.8%), while employment is higher in the heads of home in deciles nine (71.6%) and ten (79.1%). These strata (quintiles I and II) are among those who lose connection to job search strategies, the so called discouraged ones, and become part of the population that does not enter into the categories of unemployment, forming part of hidden unemployment that we have already commented. They are socially disaffiliated (Castel 1997; 2002), with high rates of vulnerability and lack of protection against the imminent lack of employment. They are mainly in situations of poverty and deprivation, situations very difficult to change.

In this situation we are not even lead to the thesis of frictional unemployment, from the imperfection of the labor market, to assuming a full employment like a possibility. On the contrary, we assumes a segmented labor market structure, which has generated a social stratum that becomes discouraged when searching for a job, due to constant frustration.

This phenomenon of exclusion from the labor market has had a historic streak in the last 15 years. As Narbona, Paez and Tonelli (2011: 6-7) indicate:

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“Evidence from the 2009 CASEN survey tell us that since 1998 the labor market produced a growing process of working exclusion and precarity: until 2009, unemployment never returned to indicators of the first half of the 90s, in addition, 45% of the population old enough to work, of the poorest households in this country works, 20% of the indigent works and 32% of the non-indigent poor work too. This means that Chile produces poor workers in a structural and sustained way”.

Regarding the perception of workers with respect to learning in the workplace, the Survey of Perceptions of Industrial Relations (2008) notes that "59% of workers agree that their work gives them “opportunities to learn” while 23% disagrees”58, and with regard to the possibility of self-development during work “45% of employees feel that their work gives them opportunities for personal development (37% disagree)”.

5.4.- Precarious Remuneration

In April 1993 the rate of nominal remuneration per hour worked was at 38.49, while in August 2008 it reached a 120.08, year when it is possible to see how some occupational groups59 which are above average (public administration directors and companies) with a 131.74; and Officers, workers and artisans with a 126, while others are beneath it (service, personal and protection workers with a 110,27).

It is possible to see that the real index of remuneration of the economy maintained a steady increase throughout the 90s, exhibiting growth of 36.5 % between 1990 and 2000. What should be noted is that the index is based on a sample of formal sector establishments with 10 or more workers60, and “workers pertaining to outsourced companies, despite working in the surveyed companies are not included” (Marinakis 2005: 3), nor workers in the sectors

58 The according percentage exceeds 64% in companies with 50 employees or more, while the lowest according percentage is between workers who work in companies with fewer than 10 workers (50%). Agriculture is the economic sector in which fewer workers are in accordance (41%), while the mining sector is the sector with the higher percentage of accordance of workers (78%). 59 We base ourselves on the CIUO 88 system of International Classification of Occupations. 60 This only changed in 2009,to companies of more than 5 workers.

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of agriculture, hunting and forestry, fisheries, defense activities, maintenance of public order and security, private households with domestic service, and extraterritorial organizations and bodies. Finally, the remuneration survey only considers the “segment of highest relative employment stability, and consequently of less relative volatility in their remunerations" (Marinakis 2005: 3), and ignores the variable nature of remuneration (bonuses, overtime, etc).

With regard to remuneration, we find a phenomenon of increased wage rigidity in Chile (Marinakis 2005). If the evolution of the real hourly wage is analyzed, this shows an increase from 2.5% in 1998 and 1999 and an increase of an average of 1.5% between 2000 and 2004. For the year 2008 (in the pre-crisis context), indices of hourly wages, according to productive sectors61, could be organized into three areas: a. High indexes: including the construction sector (129,82) and the commerce sector (125,17). b. Intermediate indexes: sectors such as transportation and communications (122,65), education (122,01), other communal social and personal services (122,54); mining (121.65) and manufacturing (119,15). c. Low indexes: sections belong to the lowest area include hotels and restaurants (109,85), as well as the sector of financial intermediation (112,92), with a highly feminized workforce (66,3%); business and rental real estate (114.10), public administration (114.71). The latter contrasts with the index of occupations of public administration managers and companies (131.74), showing a clear difference between the rates in the public and private sectors, social and health services, (114,34), electricity, gas and water (114.29).

In addition there is a large gap of remuneration between genders. The Supplemental Income Survey of the INE in 2007 made a distinction between categories of occupations, taking accounts of the gaps in each one of them. Workers and laborers are those with higher levels of gender equity in earnings (86.4%), although these also declined from the 95.6% shown in 2004. The worst rates are in the occupational categories of professionals (62.2%), and

61 Here, classification CIIU-3 is used, and the previously mentioned are excluded.

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artisans and laborers (62.9%). As far as executives (72%) and office employees (77.9%) there are still steady trends toward reducing the gaps of previous years, however slowly (INE 2007).

The results of remunerations in ENCLA Survey 2008 and 2011, display alarming results. While 6.4% of workers subsisted below a minimum wage in 2008 and 2011, the highest percentage of workers (31.4%) is in the swathe between USD $325 and USD $470 monthly. Following them are those in the swathe between USD $470 and USD $626 per month with 17.8%. This means that in Chile 54.8% of workers earn no more than USD $626 a month, which shows high labor precarity in relation to the costs associated with the year 2011, where this segment has increased by 22%.

Heterogeneity found in the labor market, segmented from the public to the private sector, from one sector to another, from gender-marked occupations, from the size of one company to another, from the characteristics of qualifications, or from the differences between local and regional spaces, etc.., open a line of investigation that addresses the complexity of these phenomena today with the purpose of generating new approaches to the concepts of employability and to decent work62 (ILO 2006).

For 2009, the additional survey of remunerations indicates a close link between occupation and income relationship. Employers receive an average income of $1,048,135 (USD $2.096), while self-employed workers receive $197,293 (USD $394) on average. The average remuneration for salaried employment is $ 327,734 (US $655) being higher in the public sector, $451,200 (USD $902) than in the private with $307,130 (USD $614). Another issue is domestic staff, which is extremely poorly paid, with an average of $130,832 (USD $261), still lower staff not living in the house of work ($111,683 or USD $223) as opposed to those who do $203,048 (USD $406).

62 In 1999 Juan Somavía, General Director of the ILO, described decent working conditions as “the opportunities for women and men to obtain a productive job in conditions of liberty, equality, safety and human dignity”.

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Despite the trend towards improving remuneration and their de-concentration in the bottom segments as exhibited by the Labor Survey of 2011 (ENCLA), this trend coexists with the reality of a segment with salaries amounting to 8 to 12 minimum wage (4.5%) and another segment with salaries of over 12 times the minimum wage (4.0%), demonstrating the profound inequality in the valuation of work by Chilean society, and a model of concentration of wealth in the upper decile of the population.

If we look at the relationship between income and education, we can see other social inequality gaps that characterize the Chilean occupational structure. More than 478,454 workers received an amount less or equal to the minimum wage, of which 80.2% had only primary education (finished and unfinished). This relation is accompanied by wage labor with 46.3% of workers with wages at or below the minimum wage. By economic activity, the almost structural trend continues in the distribution of employed persons receiving less than or equal to the minimum income, with activity having a greater relative weight. Agriculture with 30.1%, followed by commerce with 22.7%, and communal, social and personal services with a 20.8%.

Finally, the minimum wage63, which "has as main objective to protect lower income workers, especially those who are not represented nor are covered by a collective agreement" (Marinakis 2005: 10), does not fully meet this objective. The small increase in the minimum wage in Chile coupled with its low nominal value have failed to ensure quality work, but instead have been on par with the emergence of atypical jobs, and of flexible forms of employment64. This is the case of the "underemployed", which according

63 Recommendation No. 130 states that "the fixation of minimum wages should constitute an element of any established policy to eliminate poverty and to ensure the satisfaction of the needs of all of the workers and their" with the main objective to "provide the workers the necessary social protection regarding the minimum permissible levels of wages". This recommendation is accompanied by Agreement No. 131 on the fixation of minimum wages, which in its Article No. 3 indicates that the setting should consider "(a) the needs of workers and the families taking into account the general level of wages in the country, the cost of living, social security benefits and the relative living standards of other social groups; (b) economic factors, including requirements of economic development such as levels of productivity and the desirability of achieving and maintaining a high level of employment. 64 In contrast one could present the case of Argentina (Palomino 2013), which by raising the minimum wage and thus having the highest minimum nominal wage of the region has been able to reduce its informal employment.

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to the New National Employment Survey for the last quarter of 2012, reached 696 thousand people working part-time and who wanted to work more hours, with a median monthly wage of USD $186, according to 2011 NESI data.

By 2008, the Labor Survey (ENCLA) reported that 6.4% of workers in Chile received less than the minimum monthly wage (USD $325), which are grouped between underemployed part-time workers and other cases that the minimum wage is not paid despite being entitled. Increases of the real minimum wage from 2000 to 2010 give a total adjustment of 20%, of about USD $289 in 2000 to USD $361 in 2010 (Central Bank 2012). The timeliness of this debate indicates that "a 77.3% of salaried jobs are not protected and/or do not exceed a monthly income of 300,000 pesos (USD $650), creating an army of poor workers" (Sol Foundation 2011).

In turn, this trend towards consolidation of precarious remunerations powers the process of labor and social precarity, which can be highlighted through this relationship of insufficiency that involve remunerations vis-a-vis the needs of workers. If we review one of the ICAL Study Papers (2013) we can see that: “poverty line in Chile totaled $ 72,098 (USD $ 144) per person. This means that a family of three people should have a monthly income of $ 216,294 (USD $432) for crossing the threshold that allows the members of that family to escape poverty”.

If we contrast the latter figure with data from the 2011 CASEN which states that 50% of workers in Chile earn less than $251,620 (USD $503), we would find the reality of a family of 3 people on the edge of the line poverty, and one of 4 people living under the poverty line. A partial conclusion could be that all these phenomena push towards the formation of a gray area of social integration that would be characterized by 77.3% of salaried jobs which are not protected and/or do not exceed a monthly income of $ 300,000 (USD $650), creating an army of "poor workers”65.

65 Figures of the Institute of Science Alejandro Lipschutz (ICAL 2013) also point to the loss of purchasing power for commodities of the minimum wage since 2006.

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This trend can be understood from the exponential indebtedness of Chilean families, which entails a lack of coverage of the basic needs represented in the wage relation66. According to the Family Expenditure Survey of the INE, the first 4 quintiles, i.e. 80% of households, spend more than they earn; the situation is particularly dramatic in the poorest quintile, where expenses are 75% higher than total income (versus the richest quintile, which is the only group earning more than it spends). Furthermore, according to the 2011 CASEN Survey, 50% of employed workers were 4.3% times poorer in 2011 than in 2009.

This tendency of "precariousness of life" and of subjectivity/identity of the worker with his work as "precarious" is contained in these four issues that coercively underline the precarious consensus, as a new model of dissatisfaction, debt and "naturalization" of the precarious condition, which obviously affects (and reflects) their working conditions.

5.5.- Working Conditions

One last big deficit corresponds to the degradation of working conditions in Chile. As a global trend, it is no longer possible to conceive of the world of work as a homogeneous space where stable jobs are constant. However, in Chile, early implementation of neoliberal economic policies aimed at labor market deregulation (Henríquez & Riquelme 2006) caused a massive rise of "atypical" forms of employment through sub-contracts, supply of workers, temporary employment and underemployment, accentuating the tendency to degradation of employment and labor vulnerability67.

The unbridled short-term goal of maximizing profits and minimizing costs has led to a complex scenario in which precarity has begun to be institutionalized, with "atypical jobs beginning to be typical", since in addition to low real wages and excessive income inequality between socioeconomic strata, an increase in part-time jobs and self-employment

66 From the emergence of this core of poor workers, a crisis of social reproduction can also be seen, in the sense that Webster and Von Holdt (2005) have tried in the case of South Africa.

67 Portes and Hoffman indicate (2003) “in view of this reality: Their jobs are precarious and of short duration, being constantly forced to cross the fuzzy boundaries between formal and informal employment - there is no wall between the two categories -, and with long periods of unemployment in between"

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is observed, which can be read as a symptom of greater precarity, if one additionally considers that in the first seven months of 2010, according to figures from the National Institute of Statistics (INE), more than 286,000 jobs were created, however, more than 70% of these belonged to the category of "self-employed" and within this group, 26.7% were people working on the street.

As a country where productive outsourcing emerged early, Chile is coupled to one of the big global trends. Its direct consequences can be perceived in job quality (Caamaño 2007). According to ENCLA 2011 (97) "more than one third of the country's companies used outsourcing (37.8%)," outsourcing being a practice relative to firm size, from 29.5% in the case of microenterprises to 53.2% for large companies. The same survey shows that only 3.6 % of companies use the supply of workers, the highest rates being found in large companies, at 13.6%. While data related to working at home in Chile reveals their major introduction into the service sector and the femininity of this atypical form of employment (Henriquez, Riquelme, Galvez & Selamé 1998), with a significant presence of workdays under 15 hours (43%) and representing the most important activity for a large number of respondents (56.7%).

The most revealing data regarding this tendency in working conditions has to do with the capacity to generate jobs in the Chilean economy in the last three years. According to figures from the New National Survey of Employment (NENE), which show that 7 out of 10 salaried jobs created between January-March quarter of 2010 and on the June-August quarter of 2013 correspond to outsourced jobs where 52.1% of these correspond to the supply of workers, and 15.6% to subcontracted workers.

Additionally, seasonal jobs during times of harvest of fruits and berries, i.e. "seasonal jobs", are marked by a deep precarity as evidenced by the lack of social protection, lack of security conditions, hygiene, food, transportation, etc. This type of employment is deeply rooted in semi-colonial relationships as well as relationships of gender exploitation (Caro 2012a). Through the transformation of large estates, the feminization of work and changes in agriculture, temporary work has become a widespread survival strategy in many areas of

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the country, especially due to the restructuring of the rural areas and agricultural industrial modernization. The difficulties of quantifying the phenomenon (Caro 2012b: 60-61) are located in multiple sources of information and the seasonality of productive activities, which can go from the inclusion of 152,000 workers between the months of May - July, to more than 402,000 between February - April.

Drifting in the same direction of precarity of the working conditions are part time jobs. In this segment, underemployment appears to become a dominant trend. Underemployment in 2011 reached 742 thousand people which work part-time and have the intention to work full- time but cannot find such employment. These jobs do not have any type of protection and security, they are types of jobs that have been installed as daily practices at the work place, and which characterize precarious forms of insertion into the employment matrix.

5.6 Revision. A Context of Precarity

These five dynamics of the labor market begin shaping forms of integration and social cohesion of a precarious nature, involving a segment of the population in the associated fragility, uncertainty and social vulnerability. It is the new map of work in Chile, which has reached a wide typology of forms of work, which are traversed by a status of work in open degradation, as a symptom of the social phenomenon of labor precarity (Dörre 2010) and social precarity (Hoehn 2009).

The process of degradation of employment has also been accompanied by structural changes in macroeconomic matters. As Salinero (2006: 24) notes: “the presence of precarious employment in the country has been accompanied by other changes relating to the composition of categories of occupation, as well as changes in the magnitudes of employment in economic sectors and also changes in the types of employment”.

Its expansion and diversification through the structure of employment can be put in relation to both models of organization and regulation of work, where fragile and asymmetric

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institutionalism in the field of labor relations establishes this process and diversifies the ability of capital to model the work space, as according to the models of social protection that each political unit develops to hold a model of insurance and social welfare (ECLAC 2012a 2012b). It is there where one of the pillars that permit talk about the erosion of social security structures and worker protection is constituted, in relation to business interests and employers' interests, and of the activation of the political system in seeking compensatory mechanisms (Tokman 2010; Bernales 2013).

While the situation of precarity constitutes a lack of certainty, and a catalyst of individual conditions and strategies of survival (Tokman 2010; Chamorro 2012), its hegemony in articulating the field of work poses a new problem in the relationship of survival and reproduction of life itself, while reorganizing a set of disciplinary tools of exclusion of the labor force towards am "out of the labor market" without guarantees and social protection (Dörre 2009; 2010), or towards partial forms of integration, characterized by intensive work with long working hours (Sennett 2006: 72-82).

At this point a new component of the social structure emerges from these precarious working conditions (Ezquenazi & Marticorena 2010), according to: a) the extension of the model of precarity and the insufficiency of wage and income conditions involving the production structure in Chile, and b) a model of concentration of wealth in the top decile, with one of the most unequal distributions worldwide.

In this scenario of work precarity and political-institutional strength of the business sector, a mass of workers becomes malleable, flexible, conforming to the interests of the business class and employer through labor precarity, being a substrate of high-end productivity. This nexus exhibits a tendency towards protected forms of work becoming atypical, especially in trans-nationalized sectors of the economy, while precarious work becomes more relevant and has a larger presence in the labor market in a discriminatory manner (Dörre 2010), extending to all occupational groups.

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The quantitative importance of this phenomenon does not exhibit the characteristics attributed to a moderate structural heterogeneity, as claimed by ECLAC (2012) on the case of Chile, but rather the characteristics of a highly stratified and segmented society, with few bases of cohesion, and with a model of precarious model of valuation of work at its core.

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Chapter Six: Trade Unions in Chile: Between Discipline and Fragility

Chapter Overview

Taking into account what we discussed in the last chapter, unions and associations play a significant role as an institutionalized expression of the representation of the interests of employees in the company in what is meant by the term labor relations, which are at the same time a "synthesis, a focal point of a complex network of power" (Hyman 1989: 37). The union becomes a major agent in the distributional and value dynamics of work, especially in contexts such as the one we are studying here, where a system of labor relations oriented to labor precarity are combined with phenomena such as inequality, social exclusion and social disintegration.

In these social contexts, unions play a key role in the mediation of social conflict and wage capital/labor ratio, in its increasing incidence as subject/actor of labor policies (González 2006; Ermida 2007, Dixon 2010; Rojas 2010), and especially as an agent in the redistribution of income and poverty reduction (Caputo & Galarce 2007; Pizarro 2005; Ramos 2010), despite a set of institutional barriers and business practices that try to blow up their power and constitution as an actor in the world of work, and as a subject in the political field.

In Chile, unions played an important role during the twentieth century politically and socially, it was an important political actor, and its activity was linked to ties with political parties and the importance of the economical space of production.

This profoundly changed with the military dictatorship (1973-1989). The military dictatorship was certainly a traumatic episode for the Chilean labor movement, because it completely disfigured it from its previous leading role in Chilean politics, and at the same time disfigured its position in labor relations, submerging it into a space of lethargic resistance and of undermining of its main historical pillars. This process was tied to the process of productive restructuring (de-industrialization, privatization and trans-

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nationalization) involving a transformation of working conditions (such as vulnerability and labor flexibility), and of coercion (e.g. demobilizing the socio-political project that the CUT had sustained in previous decades)68.

Below we review the disciplinary relationship established by institutional mechanisms of organization and union representation, through an asymmetric framework in labor relations and the removal of the right to collective action by workers. From this we statistically show five trends which characterize unionism in Chile, and that provide us with a perspective from which to understand the influence of the phenomenon of labor precarity in its constitution and reconfiguration.

6.1.- Institutional Discipline

Changes in the occupational structure, a rapid increase in precarious employment, labor flexibility, and a policy of persecution, repression and discipline have weakened the role and membership of trade unions and of the collective bargaining power of workers in the definition of the labor market. The mutation process of labor and work relations (Montero 2000; Campero 2007) continued its course in the years of "democratic transition", which was marked by a new correlation of forces in the political arena, from organizations of social classes69. The pattern has occurred since 1990 with the generation of instances of a trialogue70 (Dunlop 1958; Guzmán 2004) promoting the construction of an imaginary social consensus (Agacino 2003, Harvey 2007), as configuration of a hegemonic system (Hyman

68 We analyze this issue in depth on Chapter IV about the history of syndicalism in Chile since 1973. 69 It's good here to remember the Martínez premise (2003: 37) of the "capitalist revolution" because it "is the new composition of the state elite, in consequence, and not in the pre-constituted social "classes", where one must seek the key actor of the "capitalist revolution" that took place in this country in recent decades. And if this was a revolution, and not only a new era of reforms, it is precisely because it finally managed to reverse the historical pattern of relationship between state and society that characterized the nation since its inception". 70 Dunlop defined these actors as "a hierarchy of managers and their representatives on the tasks of supervision", "a hierarchy of workers (non-managerial) and some delegates" and "government agencies specialized...in matters relating to workers companies and their relationships" (Dunlop 1958: 7). Clearly the example of Fordist Great Britain of the 50s' is not comparable to the Chilean neoliberal society of the 90's, but it does coincide with the actors as far as the tripartite logics of institutionalization of the labor dispute are concerned. We will discuss this topic in the next chapter in accordance with the tactics of the Chilean labor movement.

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1987; Edward & Whitston 1989), which saw the emergence of debates and policies concerning the "labor question" weakly and structurally hobbled to the partisan interests of political blocs in the struggle for power.

These combined phenomena involved the establishment of a disciplinary matrix of domination in social/industrial relations leading to the configuration of a society marked by a "neoliberal formula that produced not only economic restructuring but also an intervention in politics, which meant an institutional model agreement, embodied in the Constitution of 80s, entailing a "social reorganization" which caused the emergence of corporate actors and the dissolution of the popular social actors; and changes in cultural policies of social and political actors" (Garretón 2009). But, what is the nature of the disciplinary character of this system of labor relations?

The hegemony of corporate actors subverts the capital/labor relationship based on the reconstitution of its power (Harvey 2007; Dörre 2010b). This model ultimately not only exhibits unique characteristics oriented towards the precarity of jobs, but constitutes a strategy of discipline (Boltanski & Chiapello 2006) reorganizing control practices in the areas of work and non-work, with a multi-systemic effect on the social structure (Espinoza, Barozet & Méndez 2010).

This is why many workers suffer from poor working conditions and positions, powerless and fragmented unions, and inadequate insufficient and privatized social protection. Some workers found themselves facing difficult changes in their workplace, such as flexibilization, fragmentation, precarity of employment, temporary work, subcontracting, and the policy of automatic adjustment of wages, long hours, and mechanization (Drake 1996; 2003; Gaudichaud 2003). In the context of labor relations and its institutionalization, this phenomenon opened a space for the expansion of the labor subject (De la Garza 2005), with the manifestation of increasingly precarious and flexible working forms (Antúnez 2011).

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The result of this institutionalization is, in terms of resistance and collective recognition of workers, a fragile and fragmented unionism (Ulloa 2003), breaking the social fabric and state-institutional protection. Their institutional power was damaged, with the intention of sabotaging the possibility of workers generating more efficient logic in matters of redistribution and work valuation. Unionism moved to the generation of dialogue of logic with business and government, in pursuit of a "modernization of labor relations", which held intact the asymmetry of relations of collective negotiation and the effective right of workers to strike.

A concrete example of the results of this dialogue is the law concerning legal strikes in Chile. The ways in which the strike occurs shows that despite being a tool that aims to promote the exercise of the rights and demands of the workers, it is ultimately not statistically significant71, and exists more like a diluted form of action that facilitates vigilance on the part of the employer, who in turn has the necessary elements to " terrorize " organized collective action, and discipline, through subjugation (pressures, threats, etc.) or dismissal. The workers, on the other hand, deploy a level of conduct that creates noise within an organizational ideal of balance, homogeneous, flatness and static. Methods of monitoring and punishment (Zuboff 1988; Simon 2002; Chen & Ross 2007) against which workers do not have any form of protection (particularly in the case of dismissal (Julian, 2012b; Salinero 2004) in terms of of contract flexibility in turn reinforce disciplinary action, as it neutralizes and/or closes the union's scope of action.

To recap, it is in this type of conflict and tension where senses of work are reconfigured with recourse to discipline (Roman 2008; Antúnez 2005). The growth of workspaces increasingly functionally organized to develop a co-optional logic that allows the transmission of meaning - from the executive downwards - that denote unions and unionism as a threat to job (in)stability, etc., closes discursive spaces the subjectification of

71 The statistical data of the Department of Labor show that after the cycle between 1990 and 1992, where 642 legal strikes were accounted for in the three years, there has not yet been a similar phenomenon in relation to the number of strikes and the participation of workers involved in them. However we must recognize that between 2009 and 2010 53,714 workers were involved in strikes, which shows a quantum leap in participation in strikes carried out, despite the capitalist crisis and prevailing labor precarity climate. Compendium of Statistics Series, Department of Labor (1990-2010). Chapter III. Strikes. http://www.dt.gob.cl/documentacion/1612/w3-article-62610.html

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work by understanding it from the core of labor precarity could be possible. This trend reinforces conditions of discipline in a field that synthesizes workplace as unemployment, work as non-work, and the production space with that of reproduction simultaneously - further weakening the possibilities of collective action and association.

Finally, all phenomena operate differently in their respective configuration, activity and results, according to characteristics that are linked to career paths, skill levels, sectors of the economy, tradition, demands of everyday life, etc., These articulate a diverse and multifaceted scenario of domination and resistance, according to "a series of representations that workers make of them" (Delfini 2010).

To specify the case of work relations and how they shape the union practice, we will delve into some examples of its asymmetric nature and the difficulties it presents for collective action of workers under the framework of Chilean law.

6.1.1.- Asymmetric Industrial Relations

The movement and transformation of capital in this new correlation of class forces was crystallized at work through the institutionalization of industrial relations system (RRLL). An industrial relations system is composed of the regulatory-institutional matrix which governs working relations, and is the result of how collective actors have been historically linked (Hyman 1989), and thus must be understood as the dynamic crystallization of a series of relationships that are "outside" the working map and that actually transcend it, in the framework of "social legislation" (Montero 2000). They install and synthesize, in turn, forms and specific modes of subjectification and support at work (Román 2008) as well as forms of collective valuation of work.

According to Montero (2000: 92) "the effectiveness of a system of industrial relations can be measured from its ability to regulate the understanding between workers and employers about the employment and working conditions", which involves a mediated relationship

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regarding prevention and/or institutional channeling of the relationship conflict/agreement between models of understanding between conflicting interests (Frias 2008).

Relational modeling of actors in the world of work is one of the most important components of industrial relations, which is expressed in the Labor Code regulations on individual and collective labor rights (Montero 2000). It is in this typology of rights, that those related to unionization and collective negotiation are found, representing in a more symbolic and graphical way the forms usually assumed by the conflict between the employer/worker worker/worker in the space of reorganization of production and products. This is where the crystallization of employment is found as socially instituted tension.

In the case of Chile, despite "political changes" and democratic transition (Moulián 2001; Zapata 2004; Campero 2007), the metamorphosis of work (Antúnez 2003; Castel 1997) has staked a path of continuity and consolidation of the pillars of the system of industrial relations, in which workers have not been active participantsexcept for as an instrumental appendix to a model of neo-corporate relationship in their relationship with the State and employers (Guzmán 2004). This path has not allowed it to enter into the political institutional space and/or the social political space (Julian 2013a), or to redefine the asymmetric structural pillars that accompany the industrial relations model.

Labor flexibility manifests the existence of a heterogeneous variety of industrial relations (Boyer 1987, Hyman 1989; Neffa 1999), which range from those that outsource the most of the relationship with the worker and weaken the commitment linked to the classical employment relationship, (Caamaño 2007) to others which uphold obligations between employer and employee and introduce changes in the contract which affect work performance and the quality of paid employment significantly (Henríquez & Riquelme 2006). This coupled with "atypical" working conditions in a context of labor flexibility and indecent work (Henríquez & Riquelme 2006) which enhances the uncertainty, vulnerability and fear as structural subjective factors in the process of securing the work (Sisto 2009)72

72 Among these new forms that go beyond the classic employee statute on which the labor and social protection system is based are Peripheral Workers, corresponding to workers who clearly form the periphery of the company. This workers are characterized by labor relations on the limit of labor and trade; Workers

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and points to a coercive moral commitment of the worker, in a context of high overall labor precarity (Julian 2013b).

Thus emerges a contradictory problem for imperatives of the business class, in terms of the coexistence of a logic of industrial relations commited to the over-exploitation of the worker, with a model and organization of production that requires their collaboration in their self-control, (self) entrepreneurship, self-discipline and self-management (Fernet, Guay & Senécal 2004; Gálvez, Henríquez & Morales 2009) as an element or strategic productive resource, in order to boost social organizational capital of the company and increase efficiency and productivity73.

From this contradiction emerges the following tension. This contradiction become priority to generate mechanisms of control and domination in the workplace, which operate as a relationship of mutual support and conditioning for whoever exercises it (Management Power) and for whoever sufferers under it (Montes 2005), in order to obtain a greater degree of "cooperation" from the workers within the company (Burawoy 1979), as well as in terms of their productivity:

a) The dissatisfaction of the workers with the compensation system. This is produced by the characteristics of the industrial relations and the formulation of tools like the collective bargaining (CB). CB despite having a central position in the re-distribution of income and earnings, the problem is that the CB does not exhibit a significant effectiveness in this direction74, but rather builds and encourages modalities of

with a weak and unstable employment relationship, including flexible working arrangements in several respects, with weak employment ties; and Salary workers on flexible terms, including employees whose contracts have flexible hours, salary and/or poly-functional flexibility (Henríquez and Riquelme 2006). 73 For example this can be detected in the case of working hours. According to Pérez Arrau (2008: 85) the problem is that although there is a statutory regulation governing maximum working hours (which actually decreased from 2005), headquarters and managers appreciate the commitment of employees expressed in staying at work beyond the hours formally hired. At the same time employees see over-time as a way to "demonstrate loyalty and strengthen their ties to their superiors". 74 Collective bargaining in Chile involved, through the force of collective instruments (agreements and working contracts), only 311,196 workers in 2011. Of this total, 275,240 are unionized, i.e. 88.4%, which means that collective instruments only cover 30.8% of workers in active unions in Chile. Source: National

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flexible payment and ways to control the productive yield (Gálvez, Henríquez & Morales 2009), which, on the one hand, increasingly destabilizes employment, and on the other, assume a logic of flexible rewards aimed at the over-exploitation of the worker75.

b) Lack of identification of personnel with company objectives. The same dimensions that articulated support in a violent and coercive manner make work assume a rational instrumental perspective for the worker in terms of his internalization of the work, causing a "deficit of trust and confidence" (Sennett 2006: 72-82). The job becomes understood by the worker as a means to ensure self-reproduction in his articulation with daily life (Sisto 2009; Sennett 2000; 2006).

c) Insufficient business capacity to negotiate innovation. Processes of change within the organization, involving a number of requirements for their adaptation and workers' internalization thereof(Chan 2000), converting the issue of innovation into a central element in flexible accumulation, requiring management practices that promote subordinate forms of inclusion (a specific type of jobs) in the productive apparatus,such as processes of restructuring (De la Garza 2001; Abramo, Montero and Reinecke 1997, Diaz 1995), combined with new forms of use and valuation of labor (Figari & Hernandez 2008).

Industrial relations become one of the most expressive axes of the configuration of relations of domination at work, which are linked to the formalization and institutionalization of relations in the workspace in the legal framework. In its genealogy, its composition, its origin and practice, one finds one of the synthetic forms in which the permanent dialectic of domination and subjective configuration of the worker is expressed, as a means of

Institute of Statistics. Series 1990-2011. Department of Labor. Ministry of Work, Employment, and Social Security. Santiago, Chile. 75 If we consider the total workforce employed in Chile in the last quarter of 2011, i.e. 4,560 million people, we can conclude that only 6.8% of workers in Chile are involved in a collective agreement, which demonstrates the level of vulnerability and individualization of labor relations in the country, and the asymmetric context that unionism must face in order to ensure better working conditions. Source: National Institute of Statistics. 1990-2011 Series. Department of Labor. Ministry of Work, Employment and Social Security. Santiago, Chile.

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configuring labor discipline (Burawoy 1979; Gaudemar 1981; Boltanski & Chiapello 2006) in the asymmetric position held by the latter in the production process. The legal framework synthesizes and conditions in this sense the observation of the worker of himself, his own representation, and crystallization of the relationship with the employer (Figari & Hernández 2008); hence generating spaces of tension for production from these criteria that interact and from the inability of the law to overcome them.

This is how in order to solve these core points of tension in production typical of neoliberal accumulation, a number of "equity" or "involving" devices are unfolded, in accordance with the principles of cooperation with the company (Wilmontt 1993), or constrictive devices, (Boltanski & Chiapello 2006: 34-35), in the sense of models of justification and legitimization, mobilizing emotional factors in order to generate a greater and deeper subjective involvement of the employee (Burawoy 1989; Sennett 2000; Boltanski & Chiapello 2006: 58).

Strategies in this direction, range from systems of reward, recruitment, training, team leadership or in other variables on the working environment (Gálvez, Henríquez & Morales 2009), such as evaluations and performance monitoring systems or productivity (Delfini 2010). These processes are made more complex by the movement of the logics of individualization of labor relations, forms of selectivity that promote internal competition between workers, the commitment to a meritocratic culture (Boltanski & Chiapello 2006: 35; Sennett 2006: 103-112), commitment to the organization, etc., in which the worker is positioned as a businessman himself (Sennett 2006: 83-130).

6.1.2.- Cancellation of Collective Action: Membership and Negotiation

As previously noted, unionization and collective negotiation occupy one of the axes of the system of industrial relations, since they meet the organizational bridge between the formation of collective agreements which redeem the installation and performance of new practices of working conditions, remuneration and benefits of workers (Hyman 1989; 2006), putting it in the center of the tension found in relationship of collective

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subordination at work (O'Doherty & Willmott, 2001). Despite this strategic role played by unionism in relation to the redistribution of income, of "quality of life" and welfare, the union in Chile is understood in particularized, instrumental and fragmented ways, both by Chilean law and the business class.

The reality of trade unionism in its exercise of the protection, promoting and representation the interests of workers is always mediated by a number of obstacles, which take on a form of discipline on part of capital in order to muzzle, disable, weaken and destroy the union. The possibilities of "defense" of the worker in relation to the logic of increasing production and concentrate earnings by the employer, are limited by power relations (symmetric or asymmetric) structurally institutionalized in the legal framework, which mediate the open confrontation between workers and employers, which is manifested in different ways of limiting and constraining the praxis of the worker, such as:

a) Fragmentary Forms of Unionism: the ways in which the formation of unions in Chile was institutionalized was decentralized in nature, i.e. at the enterprise level, which added to the resistance of employers, set up an atomic inorganic structure in most sectors of the economy, with lack of cooperation and dynamics of strengthening of negotiation positions with respect to entrepreneurship (Salinero 2004). This is one of the sources of the configuration of a subjectivity that assumes the union problems as atomic to the specific nature of the company.

b) Low Rates of Unionism. The shortage of increases in unionization rates becomes one of the main fundamental faults of the union in the imagination of workers, as a collective tool of organization and representation of their interests (Salinero 2006). The problem is quite complex and adds to the difficulties set by companies against forming unions (anti-union practices in affiliation), as the role of political parties in the union leadership, with a corresponding loss of legitimacy and representativeness.

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c) Anti-Union Practices. Despite the audits conducted by state agencies, anti-union practices (PPAA)76 are registered as a constant in the shaping of industrial relations. The PPAA, which are sanctioned in Chile, result in fines ranging from USD $12,609.08 to USD $840.61, thus constituting a new instrument for companies to neutralize (with layoffs or intimidation) attempts of organization of workers inside a company, which may include the "denial of fundamental rights, denial of collective subject and erosion of union autonomy" (Salinero 2009: 4). Despite high rates of infractions77, punishment of companies sanctioned by the state average around two years, from the judgment of PPAA, these companies cannot be vendors to the state and are excluded from the Public Procurement System of the state. Still, the denouncement and justification of a PPAA conforms to be a bureaucratic and cumbersome process (Salinero 2009: 17-20), and thereforea rather hidden form of discipline is consolidated onto the worker instead of control/regulation from the state towards companies.

d) Composition of the Legislation and Collective Negotiation: legislation deactivates the need for collective agreements with a focus on promoting individual negotiations, and/or extends the benefits achieved from a collective negotiation process for both union and non-union workers. The forms of collective agreements allow the negotiation of agreements without the need for workers to have a union (Salinero 2004), fueling the formation of workers' committees, which are rather close to the power of management and find less power of negotiation than unions.

e) The Replacement of Workers on Legal Strike. In Chile the replacement of workers is allowed during the development of a legal strike - with some specifications regarding the collective contract offer submitted by the company to the union - and after 15 days of it being effective. This in turn reduces the power of pressure that can

76 According to a study by Jorge Salinero (2009), matters sanctioned by union practices are of union interference, trade union protection, collective bargaining, union worker dismissal without jurisdiction, the right to strike, union dues, membership, and freedom of association, harassment to leaders and workers. 77 For example, 75 offenses committed in the first half of 2011. Report of Companies and/or Employers convicted for anti-union practices. First Semester 2011. Department of Labor. Ministry of Work, Employment, and Social Security. Santiago, Chile. http://www.dt.gob.cl/1601/w3-article-94445.html

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be generated by workers so as to obtain benefits proposed and accelerate the negotiating process. Additionally, as in the case of anti-union practices, the sanction from state agencies for hiring workers in the first 15 days of strike may occur, but this usually results in fines which are not significant78, in relation to earnings produced, and once again are rather disciplinary devices, through the insufficiency of punishment, added to the non-payment of wages during the strike, used by business classes in Chile to weaken unionism and collective action.

f) The Limitation of Right to Unionism and Collective Negotiation to a Specific Type of Workers. De-protection of labor rights of a type of workers, especially for those without protected employment and which transit in informality and temporary jobs, includes a number of difficulties in the exercise of trade unionism, which is part of a discipline strategy for more precarious workers of the composition of the workforce (Henríquez & Riquelme 2006).

h) The Type of Employments in which Workers Perform: currently, a substantial part of the emerging jobs have precarious characteristics, and mean for the workers high levels of uncertainty in their working future, significantly neutralizing options of negotiating for improvements in their contract conditions (Salinero 2009).

As we will see in the next section, the legal, institutional and political option of cancellation of the action by the state has had a significant impact on configuring heterogeneous unions of precarious character, with little cohesion at the organizational level and of low levels of representation. Its fragmented and uneven composition callits its health and its present condition in face of phenomena of labor precarity into question.

78 The Labor Department notes that "381 of the Labor Code provides that the replacement of workers on strike is prohibited, unless the last offer made, in the manner and with the advance referred to in Article 372 paragraph three, considers the same provisions as those contained in the current collective contract, readjusted according to CPI on the period from the date of the last adjustment and the date of expiration of their term; to establish a minimum annual indexation according to CPI for the period of the contract excluding the last 12 months, in which the offer is delivered to workers and the Department of Labor with a minimum of two days anticipation within 5 available to workers on strike to make a decision and also that the negotiating collective is offered a bonus of replacement equivalent to 4 UF (about U.S.$ 190) for each worker hired as replacement".

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6.2.- A Heterogeneous, Precarious and Fragmented Unionism. Five Tendencies.

The so-called "crisis of unionism in Latin America" (Zapata 2004) also found expression in Chile. This crisis spread over two decades (1990-2010) to the present, mainly characterized by low rates of union membership, the tendency on the part of the unions towards inactivity, low rates of collective bargaining, the fragmentation of the world of work and the individualization of labor relations, with a respective heterogeneity and complexity of the methods of work and the composition of the working class resulting (Antúnez 2003). Added to this is the weakening of the real social basis of the unions, a reduction of labor unrest; and the decline of its social influence on the level of public policy debates.

The combination of these facts seemed to lay the foundations of exhaustion of discourse and syndicalist practice, and its difficulties in giving satisfactory answers to the challenges posed by global capitalism, entailing a deep erosion and accelerated decomposition of the elements and relationships constituting it as a collective actor, as a social gravitating subject for the generation of social welfare and protection practices.

Although we recognize that the "crisis of unionism" is not a phenomenon of Latin American structural heterogeneity, but rather has global features (Fairbrother & Griffin 2002; Munck 2003, Mason 2007), the "union issue must be treated within a national framework, showing the international ties that begin to establish at a regional level, focusing on the different temporal tensions by which it is crossed, as well as cultural, social, and political facilitators, etc.

Recognizing this level of complexity, we then identify five trends of unionism in Chile, which we categorize as structural features to discuss the diagnosis of a "crisis of unionism", and the health of unions as organizations representative of workers (Fairbrother & Griffin 2002: 2-3).

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6.2.1.- Tendency I. Low Rates of Union Affiliation

According to figures from 201179, there were around 10,310 active unions with a total population of members of 892.365 employees, representing 11.8% of the total workforce and 14.1% in the private sector, the population of sector services and self-employed workers (with potential for unionization), which are in active unions.

This trend contrasts with the reality of the Latin American countries such as Argentina, Brazil, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Paraguay and Uruguay, where growth rates have been higher and there has been a strengthening process, in contrast with countries such as Costa Rica, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Guatemala and Mexico, which exhibition stagnation or weakening in the power of their unions80.

In Chile there are four types of unions, with different dynamics of affiliation in the last 20 years: 1. Company Unions (SE in Spanish): these unions exclusively organize workers from the same company. Among the different types assumed by trade unions in Chile, the power of negotiation is basically concentrated in such unions (Aravena & Nuñez 2011: 123), which have increased from 5,048 in 1991, with serious depletion processes in number between 1994 and 2002, to 6,611 unions (62.5% of all unions) with a total of 640,430 workers affiliated (68.1%) in 2012 and a positive variation, in relation to 2011, of 4% in the number of unions and 6.4% for affiliates.

2. Intercompany Unions (SIE): organize workers belonging to companies with two or more different employers, and encompass 15.1% of all union members in the country. In 1991, the SIEs reached 571, declining to 452 active unions in 2000, while in 2011 they reached 1,152. This means an increase of more than 100% in 20

79 Source: Statistical Compendium of the Labor Department (1990-2012). 80 Unionization rates nevertheless remain low in the region, except for Argentina with 37%, followed by Uruguay with 25% and Brazil with 19.1%. (Almeyra & Suarez 2009).

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years. This is reflected in the 580 unions which in one form or another are structured in relation to that period, although the share of total trade unions has declined by 13.1% between 2011 and 2012. For the past year the SIE showed a variation of 2.6% with 1,183 unions and of 9.1% in the number of members, with a total of 143,438. The significant evolution from 1990 to 2012 is clear in the formation of intercompany unions. However, a problem arises concerning the company figure and the multiple identities of the company (Silva 2007; Calderón 2008; Duran & Kremerman 2008), i.e. the division of a company in minor productive units with various corporate names, which operate in practice as obstacles to the formation of company unions, forming processes of collective negotiation much more asymmetric and mediated by the will of the employer as in the case of inter-company unions81.

3. Union of Independent Employees (SI): organize workers who do not depend on an employer and freelance workers. The particularity of independent unions is that they did not suffer a decline in their numbers during the period of 1994 - 2000, as opposed to company worker unions, and instead suffered in the years 2007-2008, with a decline of 18%. The SI experienced a historic year in 2004 with 2,873 unions, which is far from the 2,492 in 2012. They currently constitute 23.5% of all unions, representing 12.6% of the total affiliates with 118,933 workers82.

4. Union of Temporary Workers (ST): these consist of workers performing works under subordination and dependence in cyclical and intermittent periods. In 1991 these unions reached 248, declining to 176 in 1997 before rebounding in 2001 to 238 and a growth rate of 27.7% in 2002. In 2012 they reached 289 unions and 37,173 affiliates,

81 As noted by Duran & Kremerman (2008), economists at the Sol Foundation, the use of multi-rut (multi company identification numbers) is hugely detrimental in legal matters, as it divides the labor movement, weakening it and negatively impacting collective negotiation. Moreover it distorts and does not show through the actual contribution made by workers to company profits. We must also remember that in Chile inter-company collective bargaining is subject to the will of the employer (Julian 2012b). 82 The statistical compendium of the division of studies of the Labor Department (1990 - 2012) shows that between 2011 and 2012 there was a negative change of 6.6% in the total amount of affiliations to the SI, i.e. 8,294 affiliates, which is accompanied by 10 unions less than the previous year, which represents a high concentration in these "missing trade unions".

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exhibiting clear signs of stagnation and crisis from the peak reached in 2004 with a total of 55.342 members and 394 unions.

What is clear is that growth from 2010 to 2012 from 714 unions has meant the growth of all types of unions, except the transient or temporary ones (-17), which maintained their decline in 2012. This latter case must be related to the disaffiliation of at least 2,652 workers between 2010 to 2011 in the ST, and new growth of members in 201283.

The evolution of the rate of unionization in the early 90's shows that in the early years (1990, 1991 and 1992), the jumps in affiliation were considerable. In 1990 13.4% of the total employed population was affiliated, reaching a record 15.1% in 1991 (the highest percentage in the last two decades), and 14.8% in 1992, followed by the decrease in the rate of union membership until reaching 10.7% in 1999.

This phenomenon goes hand in hand with the expectations generated in all social actors during the process of "democratic transition" (Garretón 2007; Paredes 2011), and especially in the trade union movement (Zapata 1992; Trafilaf & Montero 2001), since improvements in working conditions, collective negotiation strengthening and consolidation of freedom of unionism were expected in the early years, feeding a sense of movement and identification with labor organizations, with growth in rates of 2% in relation to 1989.

Ultimately these expectations were not met by any of the governments of the coalition (Aravena & Nuñez 2011); on the contrary, they consolidated conditions of easing and labor precarity, in addition to the weakening of workers' organizations, which in turn had a negative impact on unionization rates as it stopped the dynamic motor of the enrollment process: an organic political support for the demands of workers and the promotion of a policy of strengthening the trade unions.

83 It is not impossible to determine whether this fact is directly related to the disappearance of the unions in question, or with a cross-cutting phenomenon of disenrollment according to the characteristics of the ST, since the average of members of a transient union is of 105 workers per union, which would highlight the presence of a trend of disaffiliation in the transitory unions, more than the explanation for the disappearance of more than 2,000 workers for the disappearance of activities of a particular union.

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Moreover, Jorge Salinero (2006: 110) notes that "variations in union affiliation are sensitive to changes in the composition of the employed workforce, especially due to the higher relative importance of self-employed workers and women in the paid labor force", this variation does not become significant in explaining changes in the rates of affiliation from the first 3 years of the nineties decade to the present, since the stabilization of rates of affiliation of the segment of dependent private sector employees between 1993-2012, with a rate between 18% (1994) and 16.6% (2012), show no significant changes that can be extrapolated to the behavior of the productive structure84, but rather refer to phenomena of: a) precarity of working conditions of dependent work, and b) provisions on labor policy and labor relations (Aravena & Nuñez 2011, Julian 2012a; González 2013).

The deficit in the rates of unionization is one of the symptoms of the current imaginary of workers. The question is How they conceive unionism as a tool of collective action, organization and efficient representation of their interests in the world of work (Hyman 2006)? This phenomenon involves multidimensional characteristics that point to some of the core problems of unionism today, involving disciplinary institutional pressures restricting the right of "freedom of unionism" (Julian 2012b; González 2013) and internal pressures on the logic of representation, bureaucracy and participation within trade unions (Julian 2012a) as constitutive elements of legitimacy and organizational strengthen (Wright 2000; Dörre 2008).

This last measurement significantly discards the thesis about the centrality of occupational productive changes as the central factor in explaining the phenomenon of low union membership, and instead installs the questions about economic cycles and the boom in union activity in reference to the political changes, and organizational logic of trade unions concerning their models of participation and delegation (Zoll 1981; Dörre 2008) as well as models of modernization (Haipeter & Dörre 2011).

84 It is only possible to observe two points which contradict this tendency. The first in 2008, with a 16.1%, and the second in 2009 with 17.5%. While this would speak of an ascending process in union affiliation, it contrasts with the rate stabilization in 2010 at 15.8%, and in 2011 at 15.7%.

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6.2.2.- Tendency II. The Decline of Collective Bargaining

The trend in union affiliation towards high growth in the first years of the 90s, was followed by a trend toward stagnation and decline. This can be observed in correlation with the phenomenon of collective bargaining in Chile, which poses a serious weakness and a large institutional disincentive (Lopez 2009b: 43-72). The CB is decentralized enterprise- level character, being the unions subject to the will of the employer to support inter- enterprises bargaining, and the coexistence of negotiator groups.

Labor legislation in Chile disables collective agreements, with the focus of promoting individual negotiations, granting the same benefits in a process of collective bargaining for union and non-union workers (Julian 2012b) known as a model of "open shop" (Naylor & Raaum 1993), where the benefits of the collective agreement are extendable to non- unionized workers, and discouraging unionization. Moreover, informal collective negotiation permits the negotiation of an agreement with the employer without the need for workers to have a union (Salinero 2004).

It should be added that the highest percentage of collective agreements (IC in Spanish) in Chile are conducted by unions (80.2%) in contrast to negotiating groups of non-union workers (19.8%), representing a widening of the gap between both in relation to 2001, where unions reached 56.2 % of the total ICs obtained by negotiating groups. In addition, unions have promoted an expansion of collective agreements, going from 229 in 2000 to 514 in 2012, with further growth to 50% in 12 years, which involves: a) the strengthening of a framework of corporate relations and a "working culture" in the workplace between management, directors, labor institutions and unions, and/or b) the vertical imposition of more flexible and less regulated models and terms from business management to fragile and weak unions to face the process of negotiation of collective agreements (Nuñez 2007).

In this series of figure it is also possible to observe the fall of the total number of ICs from 1993 until 2001. In the case of unions, they went from 1,803 collective agreements obtained in 1993 to 1,285 in 2001, while negotiations by groups of non-unionized workers

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between contracts and collective agreements averaged 1,139 from 1990-1995, and then suffered a decrease to reach 1,000 in 2002. This can be attributed to reforms reducing the number of workers needed for the formation of a union (Aravena & Nuñez 2011), which increased the number of unions willing and able to negotiate, since from that year a process of stabilization is recorded between 465 ICs in 2003 and significant growth in 2011 with 659 ICs. At present (2012), negotiating groups have achieved 540 ICs, of which 440 are collective agreements, showing the emergence of a bargaining core and an important partner for industrial relations, which can be interpreted as a strategy of companies to discourage the formation of unions and labor conflict85.

Moreover, the growth of the ICs celebrated by unions has exhibited steady growth since 2005 to date. The increase was from 1.595 IC in 2005 to 2.349 ICs in 2011, with an increase of 32% in 7 years, and the strengthening of collective conventions detrimental to collective agreements86. The Labor Survey of 2011 also notes the importance of unions, when stating that 88.7% of the companies surveyed with a union presence had negotiated collectively over the past 5 years, while only 8.3% without unions had negotiated collectively (ENCLA 2011: 252).

Moreover, this growth in the number of ICs has not been reflected significantly in the number of workers under the umbrella of a collective agreement. Collective negotiation in Chile involved, through the mediation of IC (collective agreements and contracts), only 306,303 workers in 2012, of which 270,292 were unionized, i.e. 88.4%, and of 112,664

85 We must emphasize the dramatic decline in the percentage of collective contracts made by negotiating groups. While in 2006 collective contracts represented 44% of the IC obtained by negotiating groups, in 2012 they only reached 24% of the total, which exhibits a weakness of workers in imposing negotiation conditions at the enterprise level. 86 The year 2009 remains in parentheses, when unionization rates increased significantly, but in terms of collective negotiation and collective tools by unions it signified a loss of 7.3%, and 7.9% in the IC obtained by non-union negotiating groups. This clearly was related to the tactics employed by the unions in relation to the capitalist crisis of 2009, which implied a regression and an adaptation to the business imperatives of productive adjustments (Cradden 2005; 2011).

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women covered by IC, of which the majority, 75,194 (66.7%) were covered by a collective87.

6.2.3.- Tendency III. Fragmentation and Atomization. Territorial Realities

It is possible to identify significant differences in terms of concentration and fragmentation from the size and characteristics of the productive sectors where unionization is effective. We will take as example 3 sections:

1. Transportation, storage and telecommunications: this is the sector that contains the largest number of active unions (2,020). This sector in 1991 had 1,168 active unions with a total of 101,636 affiliates, which means an average of 87 workers per union. 20 years later, the total population of affiliates was 144,644 with 1,991 unions, which means an average of 72 workers per union, with a clear dispersion of workers. By 2012, the number of unions had increased by 29 unions, with a total of 147,887 affiliates, maintaining the tendency to dispersion, with 73 workers on average per union.

2. Financial Intermediation: In this area a distinct trend exists, because in 1991 there were 223 active unions, with a total of 32,429 affiliate workers, which means an average of 145 workers per union. By 2011, this sector had 191 active unions, with a total of 38,042 unionized workers, meaning an average of 199 workers per union. By 2012, the unionized population had grown to 41,081 workers, with a decrease in the number of unions (187), which means a process of (re)concentration, compared to 1991, with an average of 220 workers per union.

3. Retail: By 2011, the largest affiliated population could be found in this sector with 183,104 affiliated members, and a total of 1,714 unions, and an average of 106

87 According to the results of the Labor Survey of 2011, there would be no significant correlation between feminized companies and collective negotiation, since according to companies surveyed only 13.5% feminized enterprises (with a female directly hired workforce of 50%) engaged in collective negotiation over the past 5 years, while 14.8% of non-feminized companies did not do so equally.

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workers per unions. These numbers change the following year with 1,761 unions and a total of 198,457 members, with an average of 113 workers per union. The total employment in the sector of retail represented 1,547,290 of the total employed population in 201188. If we consider that the total number of members is 183 104, we obtain a rate of affiliation of 11.8%, i.e. 3% below the average rate.

This shows how diverse trends were developed for various sectors of production relating to concentration, dispersion and fragmentation of the affiliates, which is interwoven with current working conditions and labor legislation. In terms of total unionized workers relative to the total number of active unions, we get an average of 86 workers per union in Chile for 2011 and of 89 in 2012.

Clearly, the trend has been uneven in terms of sectors, and has advanced for different characteristics in different directions. While in total figures we see that variations per year in terms of affiliation and number of active unions exist, we found a correlation until 1999 between the decline of unionized workers and the corresponding decrease in the number of unions89.

What the data indicates to us in general terms is that the growing number of unions is not related to the growth of the rate of union affiliation, but rather speaks to a trend of fragmentation and atomization of the unionized population in increasingly smaller unions, which represents a limiting factor for the collective power of organized labor. Tendencies to increase and decrease the size of the affiliated population is proportional to the tendency in the number of active unions. We can also observe a tendency towards the creation of more unions in relation to the growth of population affiliated. The year 2000 marks a milestone as a counter-trend of previous years; a growth of the affiliated population is observed, which was not experienced since 1995. Arguably, this situation was restored in the years 2007-2008, by a trend toward concentration, where there is a larger number of

88 Source: Statistical Series of the Department of Labor. 1990-2011. Labor Department. Ministry of Work, Employment, and Social Security. Santiago, Chile. 89 Source: Statistical Series of the Department of Labor 1990-2012. Department of Labor. Ministry of Work, Employment, and Social Security. Santiago, Chile.

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unions and of unionized population, but overall the trend towards union fragmentation has been strengthened90 (Aravena & Nuñez 2011: 123).

6.2.4 Tendency IV. “Labor Unrest” and Consensus

Between the years of 1990-1993 a total of 886 legal strikes were conducted in Chile. The year 1991 turns out to be iconic, not only in terms of the number of strikes made (219), but the number of workers involved in them, which amount to 45,910 workers. This figure was not repeated or exceeded, despite cumulative growth of 23.1% of the total unionized population (216,538 workers) as of 2012. Also 1990 stands out for the highest average duration of strikes (15 days), precisely the benchmark established under labor law as the maximum duration of a legal strike, but in no other year was this average exceeded or repeated.

While in 1992 the maximum duration of strike’s days was a record, with 2,975 total days, a figure not be repeated or exceeded in the last 22 years. This trend for the first four years of democratic transition (1990-1993) shows the bases of a distinct unionism that will be articulated in the following decades and which is part of a period characterized by

“the possibilities of expression of the democratic context, as well as high economic growth of the country. Both factors raise the right time for workers to promote a demand that may reward their participation in such growth” (Espinoza 2007: 4).

This will change in the mid 90's with a significant decrease in strike activity. By the end of the decade a union model which no longer based its action on strikes was consolidated, and

90 Of course it is also worth mentioning that there are cases of sectors with fewer workers and higher concentration, as the case of supply of Electricity, Gas and Water. This sector in 2011 had 57,940 workers, of which 11,478 were affiliated, i.e. 19.8%, a figure which was 5.7% above the national average rate of union affiliation. This example shows how membership and concentration rates vary according to the structure of the productive sectors. Source: Statistical Series of the Labor Department. From 1990 to 2011. Department of Labor. Ministry of Work, Employment, and Social Security. Santiago, Chile.

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was marked by the consequences produced for employment by the Asian crisis91. In 1999 it was possible to identify a decrease of 51.7% compared to the number of strikes made in 1993; a decrease of 57.4% in the workers involved; a 50.3% reduction in the length of total days of strike; and with a decrease of 66.9% in cost of days per people.

Between the years 2000-2006 a total of 1,345 legal and illegal strikes stand out (Espinoza 2007), which includ the public sector (in which strikes are illegal). In the strike cycle years of 1998-2006, the main causes of the strike are strictly economics reasons 70.4%, followed by 7.4% for protests for change of dependency or ownership of the company, and the same figure (7.4%) for general working conditions (Armstrong & Águila 2006; Espinoza 2007). This way, the main reasons for strikes start becoming consolidated to a unionized corporate model (Ross 2007), both in the private sector and in the public sector.

Moreover, dynamism of labor conflict during the process of "democratic transition" (1990- 1997) had as main axes the sectors of production such as Industry (41.7%), Mining (25%), and Transportation and Communications (20.8%). This concentrated structure of the labor conflict proceeded to greater diversification in the period between 1998-2006, with a presence of sectors such as trade (3.7%), government and public sector (14.8%), construction (7,4%) and financial services (7.4%). To this we must add in this period a crisis of the previous nuclei of labor conflicts, with a decrease in mining (-13.9%), industry (-19.5%) and transportation and communications (-12.5%). This will be noted in the number of strikes to be held in these last three sectors between the years 2006-2011, which ascends to 51 strikes in mining, 101 in transportation and communications, and 262 in industry.

Given this scenario Diego López (2009a: 7) indicated that:

91 In this direction our thesis is contrary to Espinoza’s who argues that this third period of the labor conflict ran from 1990 to 1997, which to us seems incomprehensible, since when observing the same data she discusses in her text (Espinoza 2007) there is a change in the period 1993 to 1997, with a steady decline in all indicators of labor dispute. Therefore we believe a decline of union activity is being prepared or modeled within a short margin which installs a stage of inactivity, which is important to understand the phenomenon of the syndicalist reaction before the Asian crisis of 1997 to 2000, and its consequences in 2001.

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“it is likely that instead of the predominance of political action - focused on attempts to influence government and legislative decisions- we are witnessing a new role of direct action on companies in the union agenda, especially led by collectives that until now had not achieved full recognition of their own interests in the usual instances of union representation”.

In our view this "new role" generates a new core conflict within national unions, which is inserted into:

a) The formation of a new political context since 2010 to 2012: with the third year of a government coalition of right-wing parties, was a weak up in the plane of the work spaces. In this period the workers developed 518 strikes carried out, which involved 84,532 workers for a total of 6,291 days and an average duration of 12.1 days. If we focus in every year, in 2010, where despite having fewer strikes (174), involving 31,799 workers, which means an increase of 50% compared to 200992, falling to 22,980 in 2011, and again to slightly increase to over 30 thousand in 2012. Even though there is a new union strategy involving increased strike calls, this is subject to the institutional channels of mediation and entrepreneurs which resort to dialogue with the union once they see a strike has been approved. Most strikes between 2010 and 2012 occured in the services sector, which we should remember is highly feminized, with 128 strikes involving 10,212 workers in 2012, and 10,598 between 2010 and 201193. This also connects with the political situation of social mobilization in Chile around restitutive claims of social rights and against private/commercial management, which leads to increased activation of the union and union actors in areas such as health and education.

92 This phenomenon is significant considering that it goes against the tendency of the facts that characterized the year 2011 in Chile: social mobilization, the emergence of social actors, and civic organization (Mira 2011; Paredes 2011). 93 Then follows the Manufacturing Industry sector with 52 strikes in 2010, 37 in 2011 and 22 in 2012. These 111 strikes involved 9,622 workers. Source: Statistical Series of the Department of Labor 1990-2012. Department of Labor. Ministry of Work, Employment, and Social Security. Santiago, Chile

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b) Tendencies towards legalizing the labor dispute through trade requirements, a provision introduced to the labor code in 2001, through Article 374 bis (Aravena & Nuñez 2011), which has managed to direct approved strikes into processes of dialogue and mutual agreement between workers and employers before implementation of the strike. This is illustrated in the fact that of 6,860 strikes approved between 1997 and 2011; only 2,026 were carried out, i.e. 29.5% of the total approved. For the period 2010 -2012, approved strikes, therefore legal, turned out to be 2,179, with 271,694 workers involved, of which 1,837 of them required the use of good offices. Finally of all approved strikes, only 518 were carried out, i.e. only 27.3% of the total.

In this same direction the trend towards institutionalization and bureaucratization of the labor dispute is reflected in the system of courts and labor advocates (Aravena & Núñez 2011: 124-126), and the role of labor inspectorates, which appear to operate in a paradox: while they are bodies of protection of the unions and the "freedom of association", as externalized symptoms of the ailments of the fragility of the worker in the workplace and "corporate work culture", at the same time they reproduce this ailment by leaving intact the tools required by unions to strengthen the processes of negotiation and their industrial action in the context of labor94.

It should be noted that in Chile it is permitted to replace workers in legal strike after 15 days of it having become effective95 or earlier in the event that the employer has made an offer of collective contract equal to the previous contract adjusted annually to the Consumer Price Index (CPI). This in turn reduces the power of pressure that workers can generate so as to obtain benefits and accelerate the process of negotiation (Lopez 2009b; Julian 2012b).

94 We believe that the ineffectiveness of the courts and labor advocates cannot only be found in the results of trials and cases per se, on demands and resolutions, etc., but in the success of individualizing labor problems and "externalizing" them to another area of the company: the state. 95 Additionally, just as in the case of anti-union practices, the prohibition for state agencies from hiring workers in the first 15 days of strike results in fines that are not significant and are again disciplinary devices used by business classes in Chile to weaken unionism and its action.

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6.2.5.- Tendency V. Flexibility and Precarity

At the same time, the diversification of the types of jobs and instable work has generated a level of vulnerability and precarity of a group of the population in Chile. Here we can point out some important phenomena such as a) the approval of the outsourcing law (No. 20.123) 2007 (Caamano 2007; Aravena & Nuñez 2011),. as institutionalized practice of the process of precarious working conditions (Silva 2007), b) policies and pro-employment plans promoted by the government and the installation of the hegemony of the precarious and flexible employment-form in these programs, c) the logic of intensification of work through a compensation system based on worker productivity, d) the feminization of the labor force and the gender inequality present today, among others.

As Salinero (2006: 24) notes "the presence of precarious employment in the country has been accompanied by other changes relating to the composition of the categories of occupation, as well as changes in the magnitudes of employment in economic sectors and changes in the types of employment". The emergence of permanent movement between informality and formality; between dependent work to freelancing, outsourced labor, home labor, seasonal workers, or part-time workers etc., are shaping new forms of precarious integration and cohesion involving the population in increasing fragility, uncertainty and social vulnerability.

It is the new map of labor in Chile, which has accommodate an increasingly broad and massive form of types of labor, which are found overlayed by a status of work in open degradation, as symptom of the social phenomenon of labor precarity (Dörre 2010) and social precariousness (Hoehn 2009; Weller 2011).

Labor flexibility manifests the existence of a heterogeneous variety of labor relations, ranging from those that outsource most of the relationship with the worker and weaken the compromise linked to the classic employment relationship, to others which, keeping the obligations between employer and employee, introduced contract changes that affect work

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performance and quality of paid employment significantly (Henríquez & Riquelme 2006). This in addition to "atypical" working conditions in a context of labor flexibility and indecent work (Henríquez & Riquelme 2006) that enhance the uncertainty, vulnerability and fear as structural subjective factors in the process of security at work96, pushing a moral commitment to and disciplining identification with work in the context of flexible labor relations (Julian 2012b).

All these phenomena contribute to the formation of a gray area of social integration that would be characterized by 77.3% of salaried jobs, which are not protected and/or do not exceed a monthly income of $300,000 pesos (USD $650), generating an army of "poor workers" (Julian 2013c). Its quantitative importance is also the mark of a dual society, with little bases of cohesion, and with an increasingly disciplined activity that disables forms of recreation, participation, political expression and leisure97.

The structural nature of employment conditions is reflected in the concentration of trade unions according to company size. According to ENCLA (2011: 228-229), 48.3% of large companies and 23% of medium-sized companies have a union. This is because of conditions of "structural power" (Wright 2000; Brinkmann; Choi,; Detje; Dörre; Holst; Karakayali & Schmalstieg 2008) gained by workers when organizing themselves into decentralized but large production units, allowing the confluence of large nuclei of concentration of the workforce, in turn related to international production chains and higher production volumes/return (Weller 2011), which positions them as the engine of the national trade union activity.

96 Among these new forms that go beyond the classic employee statute on which the labor and social protection system is based, are peripheral workers, corresponding to workers who form the periphery of the company, with relations on the limit of labor and trade; Workers with a weak and unstable employment relationship, including flexible working arrangements in several respects, with weak employment ties; and salary workers on flexible terms, including employees whose contracts have flexible hours, salary and/or poly-functional flexibility (Henríquez and Riquelme 2006). 97 If we focus on the Household Socio-Economic Characterization Survey (CASEN) 2009, the result is that 75% of jobs with wages are not protected and/or do not exceed a monthly income of $ 300,000 (U.S. $ 630). If we consider the latest data of the new Labor Survey (2012) results show that only 40% of the occupied and 53.3% of employees have a protected work.

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6.3.- A Problematic Present for Unionism

The union thus appears in this context as a contradictory symbol for the processes of collective identification with work in this discipline network, because by itself it does not ensure the effectiveness of a real logic of resistance and control due to biases in the configuration of the employer-employee conflict and the asymmetric labor institution. Yet it seems that, in the midst of all devices operating to weaken the power of negotiation of the workers, just the fact of its formation and existence is, in this context, a real praxis of resistance to business imperatives and the policy related to existing labor legislation.

The intent of the corporate culture for make union affiliation more difficult, and in other cases simply ban it altogether, makes an extremely difficult climate of social dialogue and symmetrical involvement marked by the seal of authoritarian institutions of the country (Salinero 2004 2006; Julian 2012b). The continuity of the role of corporate actors in this matrix of labor relations, the intensification of five trends that point to a crisis and to a weakening of unionism, and the context of labor precarity surrounding labor, turns the problem into an axis of the economy policy in Chile.

Given this ongoing and constant relationship of asymmetric power that has solidified in recent years, the proposal of this research is to first recognize that while unionism must pursue practices innovation aimed at restoring rights related to legislation labor and institutional strengthening as an actor on the stage of labor relations, it is necessary to understand how the situation of fragility and asymmetry has placed union into a position of disadvantage in terms of open negotiation and action as constituted in the workplace, as this helps to clarify and identify more precisely how it unions behave today in the generation and adaptability of strategies and tactics within workspaces in order to face conditions of labor precarity.

To account for this phenomenon, in the next chapter we review the history of Chilean unionism from 1975 to the present in order to understand the process of labor precarity and its influence on the behavior of trade unions.

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PART FOUR. UNIONISM IN CHILE (1975-2010)

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Introduction

The development of unionism in Chile has been marked by different breaks and discontinuities in the process of its formation, decomposition and reorganization. There have been several significant historical milestones that have acted at both a level of shock and trauma in Chilean union policy, generating various expressions of mobilization and organization of workers in Chile throughout the the twentieth century.

Changes in patterns of accumulation and production, of social policy, the role of the state, as well as social conflict and international politics have outlined a particular constellation of trade unionism in the past four decades, both in Chile and in Latin America.

Regarding the last four decades, it is clear that the forms of re-structuring of production, political and legal changes, and the creation of new institutions and strategies of state power to address work as part of a social policy have diversified the spectrum of stages in which the working class has mobilized and transited, amid trends of work flexibility and labor precarity.

Chapter Seven: Chronology of Trade Unions in Chile

Chapter Overview

The energization of international relations and the process of neo-liberalization have given way to the emergence of structural phenomena that have modified the conditions of possibility of formation for the trade union movement not only in Chile but in all countries that have been subjected to these measures within the workspace. Accompanied by adjustment plans, new forms of subjection and discipline have been undertaken from the level of subjectivity and govern-mentality, which have gone hand in hand with the introduction of new production models and a general restructuring of relations of production permanently, that is, precariously and flexibly.

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David Harvey (2007: 59 – 60) indicates that neo-liberal policies played an important role in disarticulating unions:

“The rigid rules of unions and their bureaucratic structures made them vulnerable to attack. Often, the lack of flexibility was such an important disadvantage for individual workers and capital. The sheer demand for flexible specialization in the work processes and of the recruitment of flexible working hours could become a part of the neoliberal rhetoric that could be compelling for some individual workers, particularly those who had been deprived of the exclusive benefits sometimes given by this strong association. Greater autonomy and freedom of action in the labor market could be resold as a virtue for both capitalism and to labor and in this case it was not difficult to integrate liberal values in the "common sense" of much of the labor force”.

Currently, the memory of these turbulent decades has led to a swing of uncertainties and a union structure that has transited between adaptive and erratic cycles, of mobilizations to static moments, discontinuities and continuities between fragmentation and unity. All in all a complex process that we will try to describe in the following paragraph, considering a periodicity that accounts for changes in cycles of accumulation in the country, especially with regard to the entry of neo-liberalism in Chile, and following its consequences for the trajectories of the Chilean labor movement.

Pointing out discontinuous periods or periods with serious jumps, transitions and changes is an important part of this study to account for the dynamics of the labor movement today. That is why if we consider the configuration of the current historical stage we must refer to the previous cycle that gave shape and form to the present mediation which befalls the current cycle of struggle of labor conflicts, and the constitution of the trade union movement.

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7.1.- Unionism in the Period of the Popular Unity UP Government

During the government of Eduardo Frei (1964-1970), the enactment of the Agrarian Reform Law and the Law of Peasant Unionization changed the balance of political forces in Chile's history marked by an oligarchic and corporate tradition. These reforms and a series of phenomena in the field of international (and especially Latin American) policy constituted a shift in the political system towards the left, which was reflected in the results of the presidential elections in 1970 with the victory of the coalition parties and movements that formed the Popular Unity (UP), with Salvador Allende as its representative. In addition, the government of Frei granted the right to vote to the illiterate and lowered the voting age from 21 to 18 years (Zapata 2004: 10), which integrated a large contingent of the popular world into electoral politics.

In the case of the labor movement, it was not exempt from the changes that developed in relation to policy reforms, consolidating its presence and "structural power" (Olin Wright 2000) in the area of labor relations; in the period between 1962 and 1970 the total number of union members grew by 151%. This level of development was realized, especially after 1965, under the government of the Christian Democracy (DC) and represented the overcoming of the depression that affected the trade union during the Conservative government of Jorge Alessandri (Campero 2000).

With the government of Salvador Allende, who, as candidate of the coalition of parties of the Popular Unity (radical, socialist, communist, dissident Christian Democrats lined up in the People's Action Movement) won the presidential election of 1970, began the process and “the most complex political experience of Latin American history. Without having the majority in Congress and having won only by relative majority of 35.6% of the votes, Allende plunged his party into an ambitious plan of economic transformations which looked to begin the "road to socialism was launched” (del Pozo 2001: 207).

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A gradual process of implementation of social and economic reforms was intended to give way to a model of transition to the capitalist mode of production, through a re-definition of the relations of production, so that the productive apparatus and the means of production would switch to be part of collective ownership, by the state.

This situation constituted a space of great social mobilization, which directly involved the action of the working class. Workers were called to become a major subject of this process, through socialist discourse, which ensured its centrality in the national political scene. Consequently this process meant a new dynamic in the organization, the trade union membership and productive relations of the labor movement (Table No. 1).

Table No. 1. Total of Union Membership (as selected years) 1956 1962 1966 1970 1973

328180 249860 361192 628396 939319

Source: Campero (2000). Including agriculture, hunting, fishing, forestry and wood)

Between 1970 and 1973 this dynamic becomes even stronger, which makes the number of affiliates in just three years grow in absolute terms, in volumes similar to those reached in the previous 8 years98. However, this process was highly contradictory. The Chilean labor movement was limited. Largely due to the laws and the structures of the Chilean economy, a large segment of workers in small and medium enterprises was not represented, as well as workers in the textile, construction and power industries, who represented about 50% of the industrial proletariat, which mostly worked in establishments with fewer than ten workers (Gaudichaud 2003: 6)99.

98 The unionization rate in 1972 reached 37.5%, representing the highest in Latin America (Blest. 1973) 99 Luis Vitale (1999: 386) notes that "during the days of the UP when there was talk of the working class it referred only to workers and employed union members. Indeed, one of the weaknesses of the UP was not to contemplate the aspirations of unorganized workers in small businesses: more than 101,000 in the artisanal sector and 175,000 in small and medium manufacturing, in addition to the hundreds of thousands of non-manufacturing urban workers, as well as workers in commerce".

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Added to the exclusion of most of the workers in the trade unions in Chile was the fact that in Chile the basis of trade unionism was scattered and fragmented, possessing little autonomy, unlike Argentina and Brazil where organizations were formed by highly centralized industries organized nationwide100. In Chile, unions functioned based on federations, and the relation of the union to the rest of the industry was facilitated by structures in which

“dominant unions [were] linked to the monopoly company of the sector and which kept few relationships with the multitude of other unions, linked to small dominated businesses of the same sector, however one important exception was the copper sector” (Gaudichaud 2003: 6).

The trade union movement and the Central Workers Union (established in 1952 with a class-based component and program) had a significant deficit of representation in whole sectors of the working class and especially within the manufacturing working class (Gaudichaud 2003). Furthermore it is estimated that by the end of 1970, the Central Workers Union (CUT) organized only just over half of the unions at a national level (though admittedly it was not legally recognized until the following year).

So Gaudichaud (2003: 6) notes that "this important objective weakness is combined with the supra-structural and bureaucratic character of the CUT", which he characterizes as a "deeply vertical and bureaucratic organization"101,, which generated antipathy in the working class which perceived a strong authoritarianism in the union leadership, organically rooted in politics and government caucuses.

100 In the case of Brazil regional-spatial constraints hindered the coordination-articulation of the union movement, together with the labor law and diversified productive structure (da Silva. 1986). In the case of Argentina, the organization by branches was promoted by the creation of the General Confederation of Workers (1930), which drove a process of unionization and organization by branches. In 1936, 70% of its affiliates were organized by branch (Robles 1987). 101 Gaudichaud notes that centrality of the organizational apparatus where "some instances are considered that are articulated in different levels: local, regional and national. However, decisions are made primarily on the upper level, while the bodies of local levels are often stripped of power, even in real life" (Gaudichaud 2003: 6).

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Under these conditions the CUT, as the leading organization of the unionized working class, retained a structural dependence of political parties; during the period of Popular Unity (1970-1973) a period of extensive "subordination" of the CUT to government policies set in, with very little political and programmatic autonomy.

Despite these circumstances, the Chilean labor movement that developed from the early 50's until 1973 became a national political actor whose importance no government could afford to ignore. It possessed significant powers of bargaining, representation and mobilization (Diaz & Noé, 1984) due to its role and its close links with political parties, generating a process of bonding and unity that surpassed the characteristics of geographical-spatial fragmentation, and a strong subjective-political component that was installed in the action of the working class in the period of the UP government (1970- 1973).

Containment channels generated by political parties, mechanisms of control and discipline of the working class through the union leaderships, as well as government policy aimed striking agreements between political organizations within the working class, had limited success in preventing the radicalization process of organizational forms and experiences of workers' control developed by workers themselves. According to Vitale (1999: 383)

“entrepreneurs in their command posts in factories, could appreciate better than the parties in their class102 the deep revolutionary process of the working class. Factories were occupied daily by workers demanding access to the area of social property. The proletariat demanded not only control, but workers' management of companies, surpassing the bureaucratic scheme of "Participation" raised by the UP. Workers paralyzed tasks and performed mass meetings to discuss the implementation of workers' control and management of factories, inaugurating the

102 Refers mainly to the National Party, which had been created in 1966 in the merger of the Liberal Party, Conservative Party and the National Action Party. On the other side was the Christian Democratic Party, founded in 1957 from the merger of the National Phalanx and Social Christian Conservative Party.

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richest process of union democratization in the history of the Chilean labor movement and perhaps Latin America”.

This process, as we noted, was full of complexities and contradictions within the labor movement, which was faced with both a need to position itself as well as a fierce political- ideological debate, which was in turn linked to the relationship and actions to be taken by the working class and its organizations vis-a-vis the UP government, its relationship with the constituent parties, as well as their involvement/control in production and its relation to the ongoing political process103. Thus this process contained significant tensions, allowing a greater level of maturity within the working class, but also calling into question the action of the trade unions.

The unity of action (one of the imperatives of the CUT since the Congress of the year 1962) became increasingly fragile, and the 1971 congress of the CUT104 and the election of a executive in 1972105 began to demonstrate that its so-called “unity” was only a façade. In this direction, the results of the 1971 congress raised the question of debate and opposition

103 For a description of this debate, Gaudichaud (2003), Vitale (1999); Corvalán (2000); it is clear that the political positions of unionism are reflected from a Christian Democrat wing, a majority unionism within the CUT that shared the program of the UP and its institutional road to socialism (mainly leading members of the government coalition), and a revolutionary Workers Front which grouped left-wing forces which criticized the dominant reformism within the UP, raising the armed struggle with revolutionary purposes, mainly members of the Left-Wing Revolutionary Movement (MIR). 104 In the sixth national congress of the CUT "one of the cornerstones of UP Propaganda: the responsibility of workers to defend the "popular government", assimilated to the ambiguous notion of "people's state" (concept of gradualist and reformist vision sectors of the direction of the CUT)...For Luis Figueroa (communist activist and National President of the CUT), and on behalf of the entire CUT, the program of the "Chilean road to socialism" is "for the working class and for all workers the only real alternative" and adds "we, the workers, of course, have elected and openly support the Popular Unity program". With these statements L. Figueroa seeks to reaffirm the absolute hegemony of political organizations linked to the UP on the labor movement...This fact, additionally, is vehemently denounced by the Christian Democrats which eventually retire precipitously from Congress" (Gaudichaud 2003). To this was added the criticism from the Revolutionary Workers Front, criticizing the null independence of the union movement with respect to the government. 105 These elections were the result of a partial agreement between the PC and the DC to maintain, despite everything, the CUT in operation. These took place from the 30th to 31st of May of 1972 with a system of proportional representation in which base militants could vote. The electoral system itself faithfully reflected the desire of militants to democratize the Central, which for several years has been criticized for its bureaucratic opacity and dirigisme (Samaniego 2003). Voting reconfigures the political forces within the CUT: the socialist party won the presidency and 16 delegates, the Christian Democrats received 16 delegates and vice-presidency of the center, the Communist Party decreased its delegates by 20% but remained as second majority, and the Revolutionary Workers Front (FTR) received only one delegate.

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to the project of communitarianism (the proposal from the Christian Democrats to generate the "company of workers"), and its position concerning the transition to socialism held by the Chilean left-wing (Gaudichaud 2003). The party system in turn suffered from the contradictions involved in implementing the overall double project of the labor movement. This tension was projected onto the strategic political debate around the themes of power, specifically the divergence between the "insurrectional path" and the "political path" concerning the problem of "dual power", etc. which affected all member parties of the UP (Frias 2008).

Such contradictions were echoed within the Trade Union movement and expressed – inter alia - in the new organizational structures that began to take shape at this stage: the "Communal Commands" and "Industrial Cords" (networks of trade and popular unions possessing a territorial character)106 functioned as either integrated into the CUT and/or as autonomous forms of popular power (Frías 2008; Vitale 1999; Gaudichaud 2003), that is, forms which could transgress the institutional limits imposed on the organizations of the working class by the institutional line of the UP government107, and which gave rise to new forms of re-articulation and reorganization within the labor movement that did not fit within the legal frameworks of unionization, and which therefore were more impervious to the influence of the influence and direction of the CUT (in all of its Christian Democratic, Communist, Socialist, and radical variants, etc.), creating new spaces in which the policy of the Revolutionary Workers Front resonated with workers.

106 In the major industrial areas of the country, the working class reacted to the creation of "unitary and cross-cutting organizations that operate on a territorial basis and allow binding between different unions of a precise industrial sector. Depending on the sizes of social fractions they gather, of their actual degree of power and of the orientation given to them by present militants, these organizations adopted the name of "Industrial Cords", "Communal Commands" or "Coordinating Committees". These groups of horizontal character, in the industrial sector, responded massively against the boycott of employers through a series of factory occupations, according to the labor mobilization in the major companies of the Social Property Area. Workers in this sector thus were able to partially maintain production by operating factories without their owner, most of the time with the help of few technicians and on entirely new bases (questioning from the Labor Department, of the hierarchy of the factory, of the employers legitimacy to lead)" (Gaudichaud, 2003:9). 107 The analysis of the structural weakness of the political viability of the "institutionalism and stagist thesis" of the political project of peaceful transition to socialism of Allende, allows to understand that the UP and the CUT were markedly surpassed by the struggles of labor and popular movement (Gaudichaud 2003; Rodríguez 1975;. Vega 1981).

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With respect to the relationship assumed by the labor movement within the government, the agreement between the CUT and the government on the opening of the Area of Social Property of 1971 - a process by which large industrial companies owned by private equity groups with oligopolistic characteristics were transferred to state control - necessitated the creation of "basic rules of participation", written jointly by the CUT and the government, thus beginning a process of organic integration into the state as one of the promoting agents of the system of worker participation in production and labor relations as a whole (as conceived by the UP), thus moving away from its traditional role of simply making economic and wages-related demands (Gaudichaud 2003).

Then, was an escalation process of strikes, from 977 in 1969 to 3526 in 1972 occured. The fact that an increase of 48% occurred between 1970 and 1971 and of 30% in the following years is evidence that the presence of the UP government was not in itself viewed as an reason to moderate protest by by employees; on the contrary, it gave them confidence to radicalize their positions (Gaudichaud 2003). A period of great social unrest began as workers insmall and medium enterprises, subjected to the most conservative patronage and with little political influence108, plunged themselves into mobilizations and strikes, accompanied by the mass political front of the petty bourgeoisie, the truck drivers’ union, as well as housewives, college students and some professional associations. Even Christian Democratic union leaders would play a central role in aiding government destabilization from within the labor and trade union movement.

In the course of 1973 and particularly in the final months of the Allende government, the CUT was unable to deploy its huge union power - the largest and most advanced social movement in the country - as a brake on the polarization and "announced death of democracy" (Samaniego 2003), but rather the opposite: the various manifestations of working class organization began to overwhelm institutionalized spaces for its progress, and therefore constituted negotiation positions that eventually generated major

108 We must remember that this sector was one which escaped the union organization and its emergence was accompanied rather by an overflow and extension of the political process of development as opposed to by union policy.

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contradictions between the laws and legalistic and constitutional position of the government.

In short, this meant a direct politicization of union struggle, where workers faced great contradictions within their organizations. Union were caught between shrinkage and growth, by ideological and strategic debates in relation to government (political power) and output (economic power), as well as new experiences of collective organization, control of production and solidarity with other popular actors.

It was a period rich in experiences of developing new formsof base organization, a historic increase in union membership and a re-organization of economic sectors previously cut off from unionization, as well as marked improvement in working conditions and remunerations. But at the same time, the period also witnessed the reproduction and consolidation of bureaucratic and vertical power structures in the CUT, led by the Communists since 1962. All these phenomena are essential to understand the processes of re-composition involved in the new stage of military dictatorship, with the beheading, persecution and repression of the trade and labor union movement.

7.2 Unionism during the Military Dictatorship. 1973-1990

During the military dictatorship (1973-1989), unions faced a restructuring process at the level of production as well as a redefinition of labor relations and of political scopes of action. Unionism in Chile developed a gradual process of adaptation and redefinition of its tactics, strategies, composition and relationships with other actors in Chilean society.

Within this process it is possible to identify a number of phenomena that articulate the field of emerging subjectivities and identities, which are all associated with a process of flexibilization and vulnerability in working conditions. Mainly six phenomena stood out at the level of productive relations:

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1) A disarticulation of the bonds of social security and welfare obtained in the previous process, through an array of industry-populist development by means of neo-liberal policies of privatization of public services and adjustment policies.

2) A strategy of dictatorship and neoliberal ideology to disassemble the conditions of social recognition and worldview that the working class had achieved in the previous period.

3) A policy of persecution, repression and extermination via the monopoly of political and military violence of the state over the leading cadres of the working class and trade unionism.

4) The generation of flexible and precarious conditions of work, with high levels of precarity and labor vulnerability, which organically weakened the possibilities of association and prolonged biographical recognition of workers.

5) The adoption of strategies of work organization and of a model of labor relations of a disciplinary nature that sought to control the action and organization of the working class.

6) A profound process of productive restructuring which undermined the above conditions, sectors, areas, etc., of unionization.

These six phenomena cross through the field of articulation of the trends and directions of unionism in Chile. They have continually rearranged the map of what can be understood as a heterogeneous space of union subjectivities, with coordinates varying in every historical context over the last 35 years. It is clear that this baseline scenario was established authoritatively with the objective of disciplining and neutralizing the working class and its organizations. Nevertheless, the labor movement has developed a diverse amalgam of strategies emerging from the conditions of possibility that these different structural dimensions pose for the subjectivity of work and the subject/worker.

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The period at hand displays these 6 phenomena, in different expressions and in relation to one another: 1973-1978 is marked by a climate of persecution, expulsion and elimination; 1979-1981 begins a cycle of re-institutionalization and legalization; 1981-1983 a cycle of crisis and structural threats of unemployment sets in; 1983-1987 a cycle of collective actions and struggle for democracy; 1987-1991 a period of activity of the unions as a constituent actor in the new democratic institutionalism, and 1991-1999 a cycle of consolidation of a neo-corporate neoliberal model of dialogue.

7.2.1 Unionism Under the New Regime Persecution, Repression and Unlawfulness (1973-1978).

The military dictatorship witnessed not only the emergence of labor legislation aimed at flexibility and deregulation of the "labor market", but also a general offensive of the government and the ruling classes against the labor movement aimed at restoring the power of the capitalist class (Harvey 2007).

This “offensive against labor”, would stand out for focusing its coercive action on: a) The physical and ideological elimination of historical currents (and their leaders) of the leadership and organizational structures of the labor movement in Chile;

b) The incorporation and institutionalization of a repressive policy towards mobilization of workers,

c) A specific attack targeting strategic sectors of national production in which the most militant elements of the labor movement were located, and

d) An attack to union organizations, their political praxis of defensive orientation, especially national confederations and federations.

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This multi-pronged strategy against the labor movement and the union subject ultimately led to a regression in union activity and a drastic change in the composition of its social base, albeit never to its total disappearance109.

One of the first actions of the military dictatorship of Pinochet, taken on September 17 of 1973 by Decree Law No.12, was the declaration of cancellation of the legal status of the Confederation of Workers (CUT), which despite all of its internal contradictions remained the governing body of the national unions. The CUT grouped within it a total of 127 federations, confederations and associations, representing all Chilean professional work and all the trends that freely and democratically were registered in the Chilean labor movement. Two months after this statement, on November 13, 1973, by Law Decree Nº133, the military dictatorship declared the dissolution of the CUT, liquidating all property and belongings and forever closing the most important organization in the history of Chilean trade unionism.

This first phase of the military dictatorship (1973-1978) saw the control of union activities and strong repression of leaders and organizations110, the suspension of leadership elections, prohibition of collective negotiation and strike, was described by some authors as the “de facto regulation with protective regulations” (Mizala & Romaguera 2011). In this phase from 1973 to 1978, experiences of organization and union protest still existed, despite legal and coercive restrictions. Noteworthy was the capacity of Chilean unionism, , following a complex period of dissolution of its most important structures and despite its reliance on bureaucratic centralism of them, to move from a process characterized by labor reforms directed towards labor deregulation and its annihilation (physical and virtual) as an

109 "During the 70s, the changes resulting from the implementation of a new economic model by the military regime generated high social costs, including drops in wages and unemployment, which resulted at a most general level in an overall weakening of the structural conditions of existence and action of unionism. Not only did the absolute number of members decrease as a result of high unemployment, but the union was also weakened by reducing the size of the unions" (Campero 2000). The ties with the unemployed would start joining from the confluence of movements of settlers in the early 80's who gathered many workers on strike as well as workers without salaries. 110 In January 1974, a clandestine leadership of the Central Workers Union (CUT) was formed. Under previous conditions to the military coup, it is understandable that its effectiveness was low, and its reach into the bases almost null (Aguiar, 2008).

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actor in industrial relations (Salinero 2006), to playing a leading political role as a core organization and mobilization of the working class for the restoration of democracy.

During the first period (1973-1978) we witness some phenomena and tactics oriented towards the reconstitution under the framework of illegality of the trade union movement, such as: a) the opening of an office of the CUT in Paris (1974), b) conducting meetings to obtain legal status and help finance federations which had previously been affiliated to the CUT (the National Mining Federation, National Federation of Textile and Clothing - FENATEX - Industrial Federation of Building and Construction - FIEMEC -); c) the attempt in some organizations to become a national center d) the generation of discussions around working conditions e) conducting some strikes in 1975 (according to Aguiar (2008) close to 50) and the formation of the national Trade Union Coordinator (CNS); f) in 1975 the first of May was celebrated, showing that “within two years of the military coup, these union forces managed to re-articulate themselves to some extent and were able to promote the mobilization of bases” (Campero & Valenzuela 1981).

The union members non-governmentalists was the makers, for first time of global and explicit way, from a critical approaches to the authoritarian and exclusionary logic of society and the policy that was being built under the military regime (Campero & Valenzuela 1981).

The government, confronted with the growing phenomena of union restructuring, responded with increased repression, outlawing organizations, arresting leaders, relegating them into exile, in addition to widespread torture and murder of opponents. In 1974 the dictatorship created the National Labor Office and the National Labor Committee, as well as the Social Security Committees, in order to conduct labor relations and thereby integrate non-Marxist union leaders (in 1973, they were composed exclusively of experts and an officer of the armed forces). These institutions prepare in later years the basis for a movement of revival of trade union leaders (Aguiar 2008).

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In is in this context that economic reforms, especially those related to privatization, construct a space that determines the characteristics of unionism in its composition and objective force. What was designated by Campero (2000) is key, since there occured: (a) a change in the social base upon which the fundamental forces of the labor movement were constituted111; (b) a decline and weakening of the productive sector in relation to services within the economy, and (c) a general fall in wages, entailing an impoverishment of and in the social basis of unionism. A model was consolidated until 1977 that stabilized the number of existing unions, resulting in a decrease in the average size of the unions. Impacts on union membership (Campero 2000) are reflected in the figures that "show a slight decline between 1973 and 1977", which in fact had begun "for reasons of structural changes as mentioned before and by the anti-union action of the government”112.

Paradoxically tendencies towards repression and the outlawing of trade unions, bargaining, etc., "energized historical trends of the labor movement, allowing it to re-articulate its strength" (Frias 2008: 93). Moreover there was a repetition of "unresolved weaknesses in the past," which

“… influence the breakup of its unity and in making more difficult this process of legitimacy conquest of their organizations. The union movement was without the support of the parties, in front a government that repressed it and which by being impermeable to their demands, imposed a limiti on its economic defense action” (Frías 2008: 93).

111 The change in the social base is marked by the "decline in employment in sectors producers of assets (agriculture, mining, manufacturing and construction) and occupational growth of service producing sectors (trade, services, transport and communications). While the first exceeded 49.9% in the sector distribution of employment to 39.2% between 1972 and 1980, the others increased from 50.1% to 60.8% in the same period. Within the latter it was the trade sector that had the highest real growth; transportation remained constant and public administration fell sharply. While both sectors showed a significant degree of formal unionization, unions located in the areas of asset production constituted, in general, the more organized and mobilized base of unionism pre-1973" (Campero 2000: 1). 112 According to Guillermo Campero (2000: 9) "the absence of precise figures between 1977 and the late seventies made it difficult to have statistical evidence for this period, but from 1980, when reliable data was available, affiliation had dropped to 386,910" (Source: Department of Labor). This makes it necessary to consider the phenomena and practices we have noted, which go beyond the legality of the organizations in the statutory framework of the labor code.

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Unionism developed an adaptive character, despite the difficulties. With this character it began to consolidate the first national organizations, from the National Trade Union Coordinator (CNS), which brought together the left and sectors of the Christian Democrats113 (DC), was formed in 1975 as "a core convergence around the Centre for Labor Studies (CEL)", to the reorganization of the former Confederation of Private Employees (CEPCH) which was independent. Another group that consolidated was the United Front of Workers (FUT), of Catholic orientation, linked to the Global Central/Center? of Workers (CMT) and its regional branch, the Latin American Center? of Workers (CLAT).

Within these conditions of formation of new nuclei of articulation of union activity, the CNS issued a document in April 1977, "Analysis and aspirations of Chilean workers after 44 months of military rule," with the stated aim of recovering democracy declaring it would not be possible without the participation of workers (Aguiar 2008). In June, following no response from the government to the document, seven leaders of the CNS wrote a public letter addressed to Cardinal Silva Henríquez114 asking him to act as a mediator; in July, union leaders of the DC were invited by the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions to speak at the annual ILO conference in Geneva, and unlike on previous occasions, openly expressed criticism of the military government (Aguiar 2008) concerning the persecution and outlawing of unionization and the dictatorial nature of the regime.

From here a more solid discourse was established as it: a) had the support of union bases as well as leaderships, and b) had the support of influential international organizations such as the ILO and the Church. Demands included the legal recognition of trade unions, a rejection of the privatization policy being imposed as part of the process of neo-

113 Christian Democracy also had a group that was known as the "Group of Ten". By 1975 they suffered a progressive fragmentation within their union leadership, which was committed to collaboration with the government with the prospect of a quick return to democracy with their role; and in second place, in a larger rift with the government, which lead to a more active union convergence of opposition to the dictatorship (Aguiar, 2008: 28-30). In just May of 1976, the "Group of Ten" issued a public document, delcaring the end of its "conditional support" to the government. Like Aguiar says: “the significance of this fact was that it was the first step to effectively split the union leadership”. 114 This was closely linked to the dual role played by the Catholic Church in Chile during the military dictatorship of Pinochet. For further analysis we recommend reading Veit (2006).

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liberalization (Harvey 2007), criticisms of economic policies (tariff reductions and foreign opening)and of union exclusion. This was accompanied by various forms of protest such as the "viandazos" (protests against the high cost of food), public declarations, various strikes due to basic conditions (such as bonds, salaries, utilities of companies, etc.); strikes (as the strike of 800 textile workers that lasted 24 hours in December 1977); culminating in the formation of the Defense Command of Human and Trade Union Rights in 1977, led by Clotario Blest, former leader and former president of the CUT (Aguiar 2008).

In 1978, union opposition consolidated itself as a global political challenge to the regime (which had already begun in 1977), subordinating the most specific and timely claims over which the unionists had virtually abandoned expectations anyway so as to be accepted by the government. This will also give increased prominence to left-wing expressions, which from the start had articulated a discourse of radical criticism against the military government (Campero & Valenzuela 1981), rather than a temporary and legalistic demand for recognition.

The relevance of this development, as Patricio Frias (2008) indicates, was the ability of national unionism to recompose itself after the heavy losses imposed of the military government, which had broken all democratic frameworks in which unionism was developed and operated from its constitutional recognition in 1925 up until that point115.

Union restructuring took place in a climate of persecution, snitching, dissolution of organizations, expulsion of leaders from the country, imprisonment, death threats and a strong policy of structural adjustment and economic restructuring that undermined the foundations of union membership, with phenomena such as structural unemployment and underemployment playing a major role.

Despite all these phenomena, by the end of this first stage five national organizations already existed, operating at the socio-political level in the place of the now vanished CUT:

115 Some experiences of authoritarianism and dictatorial regimes in Chile may be mentioned here, as exceptional but cyclic moments that have tested the labor and trade union movement in Chile (Salazar 2003).

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The National Coordinating Union (CNS), the Democratic Workers Central (CDT), the United Workers Front (FUT), the Confederation of Private Employees (CEP) and the Confederation of Copper Workers (CTC). These 5 organizations played a strategic role in the next stage, strengthening the defense of trade union rights and promoting trade union unity as engines of concentrating protests against the military regime and pushing a policy for the restoration of democracy.

7.2.2 Union Institutionalization and Reactivation (1979-1981)

On 1979 and much of 1980, the military dictatorship, meanwhile, "concentrated on the transformation of social relations in pursuit of adapting economic institutions and the socio- political order. In these terms “...it was the free market that presided over the new social institutions" (Frias 2008: 96). The aim was to reconstitute a social order that would ensure the possibilities of accumulation for domestic and transnational capital, restoring the power of the capitalist class (Harvey 2007), but reducing the stresses generated in the first period with respect to the pressures of international organisms as well as of domestic social actors.

On January 2nd of 1979, the military regime promulgated a Labor Plan that opened again, though in a very restrictive way, the possibility of collective bargaining116. According to Francisco Zapata (2004), the military dictatorship repealed the provisions of the Labor Code of 1931 and replaced them with new rules that radically modified the rights of Chilean workers117. Although it recognized the legality of unionism, it only allowed restricted activities in the local company, i.e. a decentralized model of union organization, limiting the power and control of unions over their leaders, members and posts, and restricting their collective bargaining and strikes at the enterprise level.

116 This amid a backdrop of populist pressures within the Military Group, and international pressures like the threats to boycott Chilean products by North American AFL-CIO (Valenzuela, 1986) that made repression to unionism unbearable in the form it was developing at the moment. 117 As Ulloa (2003: 14) states "This plan established the collective bargaining process, proceeding to repeal Decree 198 of September 1973 which abolished union rights and freedoms. The labor plan sought to channel and control the labor movement by excluding unions from productive branches, establishing unions by companies, inter-companies, independent and temporary ones". Only 4.44% of collective negotiations lead to a strike, prioritizing a "sense of powerlessness" (Campero & Valenzuela 1981: 475) with regard to institutionalized methods in industrial relations and the exercise of strike.

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This new institutionalism and legality had numerous effects: (a) the deregulation of labor markets, (b) the reduction of bargaining power of unions at the national level and shifting negotiations in companies' favor; (c) the strengthening of individual contracts and weakening of collective negotiation of labor, (d) the creation special types of contracts for temporary agricultural workers, longshoremen and other particular industries such as domestic workers, (e) the prohibition of collective negotiation for many workers, especially those with temporary work or in work in small, public or agriculture-related businesses.

Although the labor movement was outlawed and repressed, it was able to reconstitute itself during the previous period, which enabled it to generate forms and methods of organization and protest that attempted to respond to the Labor Plan, for example by forming the Common Front Against Labor Policy (Aguiar 2008; Campero & Valenzuela 1981), which was forged by the four organizations that functioned as unions at the time, namely the Group of Ten (DC), the Confederation of Individual Employees with the Worker’s Union of Chile (pro-government), the FUT and the CNS, closest to the historical CUT (pre- coup)118.

This protest was broken up by the government, which "normalized" and "cleaned" unions, to ensure the implementation of the labor reforms fully and 'peacefully'119, as forms of national organization that were more powerful than business organizations (which was consolidated from 1976) began to mature, and the roles of the labor movement as a strategic political actor in the fight against dictatorship began to be defined.

The policy of the dictatorship was to devastate the core of concentration of union-workers. Wages were pushed to impoverishment levels, were an increase in structural unemployment

118 Illegal celebration of the 1st of May in 1979 ended with "a call to unity and the development of a historic project that represents social workers and has guidelines in democracy, pluralism and participation (...) that its struggle is to return the workers' rights and democracy to the country" (Campero & Valenzuela 1981: 500). 119 "Work pressure against its implementation (the Labor Plan) did not modify the strategy set by the government, and union leaders in companies began to operate within the rules the trading system imposed" (Campero & Valenzuela 1981: 465).

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and a shift in the strategic situation of the national economic context. This situation can give us an idea to understand the trends towards labor precarity in the dictatorship.

The social base from which unions recruited began to recede from historically strategic productive sectors - industry and construction - which represented the most important and most structurally relevant sectors from the point of view of traditional urban union mobilization strategies. Since both sectors were the most affected in terms of economic growth, the impact of changes hit at the heart of historic union activity120 and therefore "its potential strategic power of pressure could not be exercised with sufficient success in the authoritarian situation of the country during the period" (Campero 2000: 6).

In addition to this development, a specific form of consent was implemented (Harvey 2007) that was synchronously coupled to the macro-economic transformations developing in the emerging neoliberal project in Chile: a relationship of dependency between employment, its (de)protection and guarantee through labor flexibility (despite high rates of unemployment in those years), which turned out to be part of a triad which tried to conquer the "common sense" of the subjectivity of the working class (Tapia 2008), imposing the naturalization of precarious conditions in the workspace, and of commodification of social relations and rights121. However these changes did not finish or redefine, as intended by the military dictatorship, the orientation of political unionism in Chile overall.

This form of resistance to the process of discipline could be seen emerging in the period of 1979-1982, as the labor movement was able to conduct some protest actions and restore the foundations for the survival of unionism (Table No. 2), as can be observed in the formation of unions and the increase of frequency, volume and duration of strikes (Aguiar 2008), with

120 In particular, workers were affected, since in 1970 they represented 63.4% of the labor force of non- agricultural productive sector, falling to 53% in 1979. Employees, however, remained close to 18 percent in those years (Campero 2000: 2). 121 For example, Harvey (2007a: 59-60) argues that "a greater autonomy and freedom in the labor market could be resold as a virtue for both capitalism and manual labor, and in this case it was not difficult to integrate the liberal values in the <> of much of the labor force...the neoliberal theory holds, because it suits it, that unemployment is always voluntary. Work, according to its principles, has a <> under which it is preferable not to work. Unemployment occurs because the minimum of labor is too high".

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union leaders in companies operating "within the rules imposed by the trading system" (Campero & Valenzuela 1981: 465), with the resulting "revival based on the negotiation process", which "led to a significant awakening of union life, after 6 years of lack of minimum freedoms (Frias 2008: 97).

Table No.2 Labor indicators in Chile during the period 1979-1989

(1) (3) (4) Lost (5) (6) (7) (2) Minimun Number days for Strikers Duration Number of Number Wage of Strikes for Strike of Strikes Unions of Strikes Index Strikers (3/2) (4/2) (4/3) Members 1979 ----- 28 10.668 213.360 381 20 ------1980 100.0 68 22.512 472.752 331 21 ------1981 119.4 56 14.968 314.328 267 21 395.9 1982 100.1 31 6.913 131.347 223 19 347.5 1983 77.0 36 3.571 46.423 99 13 320.9 1984 61.2 38 3.595 46.473 95 13 343.3 1985 57.2 42 8.532 67.603 203 8 360.9 1986 58.0 41 3.940 69.034 96 17 386.9 1987 58.2 81 9.913 104.213 122 10 422.1 1988 57.8 72 5.645 87.451 78 15 446.1 1989 56.0 101 17.857 298.561 177 17 507.6

Suorce: Salinero (2000).

Collective Bargaining, under the standards imposed in July by the Labor Plan, was launched in August 1979, forcing the opposing union to

"… move from general criticism of the Labor Plan, the confrontation of specific conditions in which it is already carried out (...) Union debate, following the subsequent mobilization after July, was increasingly focused on the specific situation that was generating the collective bargaining process and the

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implementation of the decrees on adequacy of unions on the law of unions (...) These topics will attract a substantial part of that union activity of 1980" (Campero & Valenzuela 1981: 509).

The negative aspects of this reform in unionism were several, since, in general terms:

"…there was a union dispersion when the types of traditionally existing Unions were being defined (Industrial, Professional and Agricultural). These were replaced by the Company, Inter-company, Independent and Transient Unions, valid until today. Among them, only company unions can bargain collectively. These legal changes forced Unions to readjust their operation and statutes in order to obtain legal personality as such" (Frias 2008: 99).

Following this negative moment, the adaptation of trade unions was mobilized in relation to the adjustment of characteristics of participants (gender, type of workers, etc..), negotiating deadlines (the duration of collective agreements and the decentralized nature of collective negotiation) and its internal composition, etc.., moving to a logic of higher atomization, disassociating itself from the branch- or sector-wide perspective, concentrating instead on their redefinitions in a fragmented union structure, and new coordination opportunities related to contractual figures with the company.

In this process of rearrangement and adaptation, the next year would prove decisive for the union organization. 1980 was the year in which the elections of trade union officials were conducted, imposed by the dictatorship in favor of the private sector, which resulted in a majority of opposition leaders being elected. This election, added to the processes of collective bargaining, resulted in two engines that fueled base union activity. Still, the internal complexity of the union and fractionation within it, coupled with the influence of leaders imposed by the dictatorship, also made 1980 the year that a significant break in union structures would occur, which had as symptom and expression the organization of three different political manifestations on May 1st.

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This is how a sector of unionism began to play a significant role in social mobilization. Especially before the establishment of the plebiscite seeking to define a new constitution for the country, which occurred on September 11, 1980 and through complete electoral fraud resulted in the approval of the draft constitution of the military dictatorship.

The union movement that opposed the military regime developed its own strategy in terms of its relationship with the military dictatorship and its efforts to boost the role of the working class in the struggle for democracy. After the advisory in November 1980, the CNS “decided to give direction to all resistance actions and conflicting foci that were then being developed - in Copper, Coal, the Maritime Sector, Industry, Construction, etc. - and that we saw in the preceding step. The goal was to create a social movement of resistance. In this direction it adopted a 'superior protest strategy' that pointed directly to the destabilization of the system and which would culminate later in the Days of Protest. Regarding the bases, and as clearly assumed option, this claim was defined in terms of 'specific interests of workers' in order to add their interests, to respond to their aspirations" (Frias 1989: 64).

These movements, which increased in 1983, affected major changes in the national political scene (Frias 2008), positioning unions as an important socio-political actor in the struggle for a "return to democracy" (Zapata 2004).

Parallel to these processes, changes were brewing in the process of globalization of the Chilean economy (Campero 2000) and the radicalization of the productive restructuring (Diaz 1995), processes which were embedded in the deep neo-liberalization suffered by Chile, and which constituted part of a second offensive against labor and trade unionism of the time, in the paradoxical and unstable climate of adaptation, which was slowly brewing from the knowledge and practice of the new labor law.

The impacts of these offensives would be multi-dimensional, but one can highlight:

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1) The fall in employment, this affected the social base of recruitment of trade unionism in various forms, particulary in the relation of small industries to the medium and large industries;

2) Into the firm upper of 50 employees, was the place where more active union action took place, in which among them many of the organizations with greater presence and participation in the previous CUT concentrated, were also the most affected by occupational changes and of economic structure;

3) In the branches in which trade unionism developed a more intensive firm-level practice, impacts were less profound or even a reverse situation of relative expansion occurred, and

4) Workers viewed their relative position in the occupation as having been reduced, so unionism of this strata was more affected (Campero 2000: 4-5).

The trends of the previous phase were consolidated during the 80s, but the program of structural adjustment would come into play in the field of productive restructuring increasingly more radically, as it "reversed the nationalizations and privatized public assets, opened natural resources (fishing and the timber industry, among others) to private and unregulated exploitation (often without paying any Social security, and facilitated foreign direct investment and a freer trade "(Harvey 2007: 15).

7.2.3. Resistance and Organic Reinforcement: The Road towards a Democratic Pact? (1981-1990)

This entire situation will take a break from: a) the results of the plebiscite of 1981, which "made the defeat suffered have a major demoralizing impact on the whole union critical of the regime b) the breakdown and beheading of the CNS, the most important labor organization which "held the historical tradition of the Chilean labor movement" (Campero & Valenzuela 1981: 525), after the presentation of the "National Statement", which demanded the end of the Labor Plan and the return to democracy, receiving a harsh

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response from the government, with the imprisonment of its leaders122; and c) the capitalist crisis of 1981-1983.

The debt crisis that hit the whole of Latin America in 1982 and undermined the material base of the military regime and its neoliberal ideology led to contradictory phenomena in terms of both action and (de)composition of the Chilean labor movement. The crisis in a differential way

"had an impact on disaffiliations in the power block or set of key sectors and a boost for mobilizing and rebellion action of Unionism, which will animate the action of the political parties, despite the prevailing repression and that will prompt the declaration of states of Siege, etc." (Frias 2008: 99).

At the same time, the crisis "produced a much more pragmatic application which was less driven ideologically by neoliberal policies" (Harvey 2007: 15). The dictatorship undermined the bases of its own discourse by intervening in Chilean banks, re-nationalizing bankrupt banks and then re-selling them at low prices to their former owners.

These phenomena represented the first instance of retreat of the "purist neoliberal ideology" and its project of capital accumulation. The implemented regime of accumulation began to show its first cracks, and this will have an echo in the working class, its organizations and parties, which begin to articulate decidedly a policy against military dictatorship. The trend is accompanied on one side by the consequences of the capitalist crisis, and on the other by the lack of credibility in the plebiscite which cast a negative light on the Constitution of 1981 and therefore the legitimacy of the regime itself, manifested as loss of credibility and support within broader civil society. This predisposes new actors to enter the political arena on the basis of opposition to the authoritarian and neoliberal policies of the military government.

122 Still, from the guidelines of the national list, labor movement promotes a variety of "collective and organizational experiences" (Frias 1989: 66).

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In economic terms, new patterns were consolidated into chains of production in the 1980s (Neffa 1999; Díaz 1991; De Matto 1992), particularly via the fragmentation of production units as a strategy intended to raise levels of competence and enhance the process of the further division of labor.

This process of expansion of new forms of productive articulation was accompanied by the objective need on the part of capital to respond to the outbreak of the capitalist crisis of the time (Diaz, 1991). This is why it was accompanied by measures such as the suppression of:

"… particular statutes that still governed some unions, incorporating sets of workers into the Labor Plan. At the same time, limits to collective bargaining were established. This was intended to discipline the labor sectors in order to alleviate the triggered economic crisis" (Frias 2008: 99).

Amid the crisis, between the years 1982-1983, room for negotiation was even more limited, and the ability of companies to fire personnel was expanded. Indeed, the decline in gross domestic product (GDP) in 1982 (14.3%) allowed, in a context of major asymmetry in the correlation of class forces, the military government to make decisions that allowed the reduction of salaries and wages, as well as dismissals without justified cause123. In addition, severance payments were drastically reduced (Zapata 1992).

Simultaneously, contract modalities appeared to be characterized by increasing margins of atypical, temporary, and part-time jobs, extending outsourcing and increases in self- employment with little or no protection and social security, coupled with a variable proportion of informal workers belonging to a segmented Latin American economic structure (Salinero 2004).

123 Open unemployment in the country rose from 11.2% in 1981 to 19.4% in 1982 and reacheds 26.4% of the labor force if the workers included in the Employment Program and the Occupation Program for Heads of Households are considered. Source: INE-ODEPLAN. It should be noted that the unemployment rate results from a national average, but is currently higher than the average in the subsets of the first income quintiles (Salinero, Jorge. 2006). While "in 1983 the GDP was -0.7%, while the actual unemployment was 31.3% and the CPI inflation was 23.1%" (Ulloa 2003: 15).

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While political support of this process involved a new State action which carries out a policy of violence against the working conditions of the working class, including intervention by decree on wage increases in the public and private sectors through wage indexation (Salinero 2006; Zapata 1992). With this policies begins to radically shape a context of precarity, where unions, with this third offensive against labor and trade unionism, could not develop an action of resistance in the workspace that was effective against the measures taken by the state.

This was due, on the one hand, to the economic and structural situation of the country which harmed union organization coupled with the phenomenon of high levels of unemployment124 and a relatively low level of unionization. While on the other hand, was found a lack of leadership and political organization according to the requirements of confluence, affiliation and union organizing, which ultimately limited the unions for acting consistently against the offensive against precarity.

Among these causes it is possible to explain the situation of passivity which affected unionism in this period of implementation of capitalist restructuring, the financial bailout of banking, the taxation of the system of Pension Fund Associations125, and the concurrent application of labor deregulation. This was a period of objective crisis in the conditions of the working class, as represented by the economic crisis of 1981-1982. Various policies were reformulated aimed at strengthening productive capacity in particular and to control the financial system" (Campero 2000: 14), and to shape a “re-salarization” process of employment by means of participation of workers in financialization and business ownership (Diaz 1995).

This confluence between the emergence of alternative models with the aim of encouraging consent and cooperation in the context of labor precarity, a strengthening of the forms of

124 See references in previous chapter. 125 The implementation of the Pension Fund Associations "privatized social security, which was now funded with contributions of 12.5% of the wages of active workers without the state or employers' help to finance these funds, this system replaced the welfare system that had been in place in Chile since the thirties and was administered by the State, and employers also contributed to it"(Zapata 2004: 142).

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repression, and the impact of the crisis on living conditions of the population were to become the pillars of stabilization conditions of precarity at work in Chile.

A process of revival of social protest and mobilization remerged in response to the radicalization of social contradictions, mainly between anti-popular policies of the government and the conditions of the majority of the Chilean population, beginning in May 1983.The union movement was an actor in this process, achieving as

"result - of extraordinary importance on the national scene - the revival of the political opposition that took place after the great days of protest called by the Trade Union movement. The establishment of blocs, social movements and the search for alliances expressed this growing process of opposing political reactivation" (Frias 2008: 100).

In Chile, despite all the attacks and conditions creating tension between tendencies towards decline and progress in union activities from the period between 1973 and 1981, this new phase opened the doors to the scopes of action of the unions and their federal and national organizations with an orientation towards the ongoing struggle to confront the military government. The aim of recovering the democratic political system and at the same time fighting against the new social order implemented by the neoliberal economic model - with its respective policy of adjustment - became more structured to the demands of growing political sectors and actors of Chilean society.

The strategy of oppositional unionism oriented around the displacement of conflict in the workplace and on policies directly related to labor, as responses to the three offensives undertaken by the military dictatorship, focusing on the space of mobilization and confrontation in the streets, with a clear political character of action and claim making.

The results of this strategy, on the level of status and public credibility of the union leadership, would place unionism in a position of coordination and convergence with respect to other social actors, which "also brought together urban neighborhood

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associations, many professionals, the unemployed and even sectors of students and groups linked to religious organizations"126 (Campero 2000: 13 - 14), a phenomenon which culminated in the development of the Days of Protest, which were conducted as part of a policy of popular sectors between 1983 and 1987, including coordination, planning and spontaneity (Salazar & Pinto 1999; Salazar 2003).

The Days of Protest “joined the popular sectors, the middle class and even upper-middle strata, protesting against the economic and moral crisis. As a result the bases of domination of the Regime were diminished and their forces of support weakened" (Frias 2008: 101). These actions on the national level inaugurated a new stage in the process and decisively influenced the field of relations of power. In this context, a new context emerged on the national political scene, opening spaces of political and social conflictthrough the emergence of a broad coalition which, led and organized by the binding power of organized labor, could (or at least intended) to "restore democracy" and popular political power.

This new situation on the national political scene was part of a decisive step in the difficult process of associative unity. On 21 May 1983, the National Workers Command CNT was established, composed of the Confederation of Copper and 4 existing Trade Union groups (CNS, UDT, FUT and CEPCH). Its thirteen-point platform emphasized democratic goals, the urgent need to address the economic crisis through economic programs and the restoration of the pre-existing labor laws (Frias 2008) at the expense of the Labor Plan of 1979127.

126 This new context of increased casualization and flexibilization of work had been shaped by a process of defeat experienced by the international labor movement, where the correlation of forces had left the balance tilted to the right, that is, with hegemony of the business classes in world politics from first big oil crisis of 1973 (Boron 2003), so we cannot neglect the undeniable signs of rebuilding large sections of the working class, not only in Latin America but worldwide. 127 It is also important to note how this mobilization enabled the political and organizational activation of different streams. This is how in mid-1983 and from these processes, the Democratic Alliance, the Socialist Bloc and the Popular Democratic Movement – MDP, were formed. These political instances which gathered various opposition forces, tried to take the direction of social mobilization, since the end of that year" (Frias 2008: 102).

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This process also included calling for thoroughgoing persecution and repression of the military dictatorship, which in any case failed to disable this ongoing process of recomposition and protest. Citing the role of unions in this process, Frías (2008: 101) notes that neither the massive raids, the dead and wounded after each protest, the brutal repression against unions and the general population, nor even with the "curfew" the political leaders lowered the rising social pressure. In these terms, "the process of social mobilization driven by Unionism in the National Days of Protest during 1983 marked a significant milestone in its role as convener agent and social actor of resistance" (Frias 2008: 101).

In that same year, now on the level of organic unity and confluences of trade unions (one of the objectives unfulfilled since 1980), gave way to a restructuring and expansion of the National Command of Workers (CNT), which until then had consisted of five Leaders of each one of the Union groups and the Copper Confederation128. This boosted the position of the movement, designing areas of work and strengthened the strategy of social mobilization overall.

This process had, however, also meant the marginalization of the Democratic Union of Workers, UDT, as the former so-called "Group of Ten" was now called. The UDT was established in November 1984 as the Democratic Confederation of Workers, CDT, which since then has exhibited the problem of: (a) Ideological centrality129 (Frías 2008: 102), as a phenomenon of politicization of the organization core of the working class and, of course, (b) public visualization of political parties and movements operating within the trade union movement and its intention to direct it towards their particular interests.

128 Representatives of the Banking Confederation and of the Leather, Footwear and Petroleum industries were incorporated into its Directive. 129 This will be a subject mediated by the presence of political parties in the union movement, which generated new institutional mechanisms to strengthen and institutionally coordinate unionism, with political and social actors, but which at the same time made this presence of ideological-political hinder various "united action seriously, existing several top organizations, although grouped in a command that, for the moment at least, is proposed to achieve a unity of action. There are even some events or trends to constitute "ideological cores" that in our opinion have no greater destiny than to weaken a unitary national image of unionism, which affects their ability to call and gravitate "(Diaz & Noé 1984: 29.)

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Both phenomena called into question the developing strategy of the "centrality of the working class" in the proposed transition to democracy, "centrality" becoming a place disputed by various political forces interacting within the union and social-popular movement. From there a series of discussions regarding a projects of the "democratic transition" (Godoy. 1999) began to rise, in which political parties were those who would promote institutional reforms130. The strategy of unionism promoting social movement activity and partially continuing the defense of economic interests (albeit on a smaller scale) was retained in the following years. According Campero (2000: 13), for unionism "the struggle against dictatorship and against the economic model was part of the same process". During these actions, unionism convened at this stage to organize under its leadership not only unions, but all social organizations, regardless of their composition, a strategy which reached its culmination during the "national protests" of 1983-1984, contributing to the destabilization of the military regime and giving the union movement a “role as a catalyst for social unrest, in the call to the Days of Protest that culminated in the loss of prestige of the regime and the call for presidential elections in 1989, based on the confidence of securing the triumph" (Frias 2008: 100).

In 1984 the contentious social mobilization against the dictatorship continued. After the meetings of the Council of Confederations and Federation of the CNT in February of that year, a protest call was issued for April 27, as well as for mass demonstrations on May 1st. In it, the President of the CNT, Rodolfo Seguel reiterated the demands to restore democracy, and stipulated a platform of 21 specific demands which deepened and expanded those made in the period and brought together, in the words of Seguel (1984), “those great things that unite us”. The year 1984 ended with the strike called for the month

130 The wording of the democratic Manifesto should be noted here, signed in 1983 by the Christian Democratic Party, the Socialist Party, the Radical Party and a group of former right-wing parliamentarians. It sealed the creation of the Democratic Alliance, to which are added ithe above mentioned parties, the Republican Party and the Social Democratic as well as the Socialist People's Union. Before ending the year 1983, a sector of the left wing joined around the Communist Party, giving rise to the Popular Democratic Movement. This movement acted separately from the Democratic Alliance, even when they arranged to mobilize protests, keeping a distance which ultimately was related with the armed strategy of the Communist Party (Godoy. 1999).

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of October and the mass demonstration in O'Higgins Park. The government responded harshly to the strike, decreeing a state of siege that would last until June 14, 1985.

This process of coordination and bonding of social forces in acts of mobilization, protest and social gatherings exhibited a certain upward development until 1985, after which it failed to take hold and ultimately vanished, since

"union leadership was passed during that stage of political bargaining by the leadership of parties and the new profile that was being acquired as a binder in a very broad social base lost momentum and disappeared" (Campero 2000: 14).

The intervention of political parties brought together opposing forces and different social actors and channeled them into an institutional proposal of exit and negotiation with the dictatorship towards a "democratic transition". Unionism thus "opened the doors to popular mobilization and allowed, before long, the opposition parties to take the lead" (Frias 2008: 101), which ultimately lead to "an agreement of democracy" (Godoy 1999) and the renouncement of mobilization and social protest as a means of recovering democracy131.

This is how negotiations between the government and oppositional political parties to agree on a transition model began, which would have implications for the labor movement and the working class with view to the continuity of business policies related to flexibility and precarity.

That is how this strategy, consciously undertaken by union leaderships, turned out to be militant in its promotion position, especially on the union bases of the policy of political parties and in the opposition to dictatorship, leaving the issue of union unity in suspense, subject to partisan interests, together with their (in) confluence of proposals and program agreements. Concomitant with unionism's retreat in the field of coordination of social

131 Mobilization and protest had been announced as the strategy beginning with the formation of the CNT in 1985, ratified in each one of the protests and industrial actions until 1987.

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forces and abandonment of its previous role in social protests was the shift towards a strategy of dialogue and promotion of institutional bonds in the party-political arena.

This sign of union politicization oriented towards institutionalization of protest was reflected in, for example, (a) the formation of the Patriotic Committee for National Reconciliation, and the formation of social coalition roundtables (which would favor the formation of National Commands of Protest, neutralizing the groups of opposition sectors), (b) the so-called Patriotic Agreement of 1985 with its stated aim "to unify and build consensus" towards a common policy proposal from the political opposition; and (c) its consolidation in the 1986 Assembly of Civility, which would constitute the trial from the Coalition of Parties for democracy (Concertación) which would later take power in 1990.

In this context, and with the definitive call for the Plebiscite of 1987, which would define the continuity of the dictatorship or the call for democratic elections, certain tensions that spanned the 80's and the strategy of the struggle for democratic restoration are made even clearer, such as:

(a) the relationship of the union leaderships to one another, which was marked by the impact and membership in political parties which ultimately brokered the transitional agreement with the dictatorship, and which would have these difficulties synthesized in the constitution of the United Central of Workers in the congress of Punta Tralca of 1988, and

(b) Second, the relationship between unions and political parties, which was one of high cooperation and cooptation of the former by the latter, thus not being a properly independent and autonomous movement, which would permeate the continuity of trade unionism in the next decade.

The centrality of the call that installed unionism in the emergence of the Days of Protest, proposed the unions the role of becoming one of the key actors in the struggle for democracy, and would challenge it to give an answer and position with respect to the

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differing’s political strategies that were present in the early '80s regarding the objective of social protests and demonstrations132.

Political parties, which never distanced themselves from unionism in any significant way, finally took on and led the transition process. Unions represented elements of pressure, tension and negotiation, but were never the drivers of negotiation of a new democracy, neither as subject nor as a social class, in terms of the thematic centrality of the political power of the state133.

Unionism and popular protests ended up becoming, due to their own lack of autonomy and political independence, instruments of consolidation for a new ruling bloc was based on an agreed method of negotiation to restore democracy in Chile.

In 1987, all the demands that had fueled the second and third offensive against labor and trade unionism became a new Labor Code. This phase laid out the re-composition of unionism, which culminated in the formation of the CUT in 1988 after the founding congress at Punta Tralca, and the victory of the "No" in the plebiscite, where the CUT presented its "Extraordinary Specification of Workers" to the triumphant political forces, so as to establish an agreement for the 1989 presidential elections, in which Patricio Aylwin, leader of the DC, would eventually triumph with the support of oppositional trade unions.

This occurrence was by no means random, since the elections and constitution of the CUT in 1988 would culminate in the dominance of the Christian Democratic positions within the confederation. According to Paul Drake (2003: 152)

132 Debates at the time focused on the characteristics of the process of "the assumption of power" through an insurrectionary method of broad mobilization of popular sectors and/or institutionalization of an agreement with the military dictatorship. 133 According to Paul Drake (2003: 152) "in the twilight of the dictatorship, the political parties historically associated with the labor movement didn’t provide much help as in the past. In the coalition, the Christian Democrats and the Socialists (both in the Socialist Party and in the Party for Democracy) wanted to avoid activities or workers' demands with the power to disrupt the democratization and prosperity. More than unions, these parties fully accept the foundations of the neoliberal economic model. They wanted to govern, not create conflict. The Christian Democrats exhibited very moderate ideas. The Socialists took more dramatically pragmatic and centrist positions than those at the time of Allende. And out of the coalition, communists had much less influence than before".

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"with the rise to power of the Christian Democratic union, renewal of the socialists and reduction of communists, the CUT now issued more reformist political pronouncements. Instead of a class struggle, the recovery of democracy, the defense of human rights and the reform of the labor code were emphasized. For unionism, the main enemy was now defined as authoritarianism, not capitalism”.

These new definitions amounted to a huge political liability for the labor movement, and the generation of an independent strategy in restoring labor rights. This demands mentioned in the document “Extraordinary Specification of Workers”, finally would not be fully integrated into the program of "democratic transition".

7.3.- Chile in the 1990s

“Democratic Transition” and a New Union Model

Triumphant forces entered the scene with a solid backing of democratic order but which for various reasons did not address union demands as a material point of contention between: a) national and transnational business interests, which had significant structural power of negotiation in the space of the new political scenario after the end of the military dictatorship , and b) a reconstituted union movement, which still had a serious deficit in its institutional and organizational power due to tensions between political parties contained within it.

The political forces of the social classes were not extinct following the process of "transition", but rather continued to operate with different dynamics and new institutions to represent their interests, without losing sight of the political scenario and the social expectations which weighed on the government. The latter was defined as a promoter of a program "transitional to democracy", which involved some compromises with a more restrictive perspective on the ongoing process of democratization, as well as a certain political continuity with the dictatorial matrix (Moulián 2001; Garretón 2007).

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With the "return to democracy", the union movement was filled with expectations, although the economic conditions on which the unions were forced to act had been established two decades ago (Drake 2003; Zapata 2004), marked by continuity of neoliberal policies privileging precarity, flexibility and deregulation of the so-called "labor market". Nevertheless, the main expectations revolved around wages and income distribution reaching higher levels of equity, understanding that the Program of the Coalition Government in the 1989 presidential race made an explicit

"… recognition of the enormous contribution and sacrifices made by workers not only in the recovery from the crisis, but over the decades of the '70s and '80s and, therefore, that the achievements of the economic model should be accompanied by better working conditions" (Salinero 2006: 13).

But despite programmatic agreements and the importance of unionism as a socio-political actor in ensuring the process of transition, "the installation of the democratic regime was given by the stabilization of the institutional frameworks prefixed by authoritarianism and the neoliberal economic model" (Garrido & Retamozo 2010. 103), which was part of a policy of subordinating the democratization process to the demands and pace of economic schemes.

The “democratic transition” needed an important credibility and legitimacy in the national and international space. The new political coalition in the government consolidated the legitimacy necessary for the application of neoliberal policies, imposing and reproducing a socio-technical political and ideological discourse over popular expectations, as a way of consolidating power and the political project of the business classes. Added to this it is encouraged to the "ghostly" threat of military coup elements in the current political scenario (Moulián, 2001)134.

134 We do not agree with the position of Garrido & Retamozo (2010) in describing this process as an "obligation" that the new government had to assume, but rather believe it was part of the political project of the new ruling elites which had been separated from their social bases, including, of course, the trade union movement, and thus renouncing their political bases and deforming into a new project that ensured the macroeconomic interests, social inequality, etc., that made democracy possess a hybrid character (Zapata 2004), as it lies in the simultaneous existence of two different types of institutions, some, democratic, such as elections

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Governments of the coalition encouraged popular sectors to endorse the priorities of the "new democracy" as their own, and to self-limit their capacity of mobilization and social protest, so as to move from a logic of confrontation and social conflict to a "logic of consensus" (Zapata 2004: 144-145), which allowed the consolidation of new social conditions ensuring a reliable process of accumulation for domestic and transnational capital.

In the case of unionism, the flow of exchange between the CUT union leaders and political parties of the governing coalition would shape a tacit agreement of pacification of the labor dispute in the form of the 1990 Framework Agreement, which granted some of the workers' demands but did not include the Labor Code, nor topics such as limiting strikes and the weakness of collective negotiation. Basically, the purpose of this agreement was to stabilize the frameworks of the government, reduce union activity in the workspace and rally support of the business sectors around the new government.

This shaping of political structures and the attitude of the government had in fact had already been predicted by Diaz and Noé (1984: 30) six years before the "democratic transition", when they questioned the strategic political nature of the coalition in its formative years, calling into question the class interests that were behind the consensus agreement and the real benefit that it could mean for the movement of workers as they felt:

"these calls for consensus may involve a new way to unfairly delay the satisfaction of the interests of workers and popular sectors, benefiting privileged sectors under capitalist regimes that have existed and exist in our countries”.

The emergence and consolidation of a neo-corporatist model of negotiation between the actors of the labor market as synthesized in the politics of the Framework agreements (tripartite between workers, employers and government) would extend into labor relations

to designate those citizens who will take the places of popular representation, the others, the authoritarian legacy of the military dictatorship contained in the 1980 Constitution).

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and shape two decades of union policy, without first witnessing the outbreak and overflow of mechanisms of containment of union leaders by the expectations and demands of democratization that workers had developed and accumulated in 17 years of military dictatorship.

In fact, the honeymoon between the government and workers, which began in early 1990, ended in mid-1991 with the outbreak of a series of labor conflicts, attesting to the progressive development of a tension between these two actors (Table No. 3). An increase in the frequency of strikes, the number of strikers and the number of days lost to strikes (Zapata. 1992: 711 - 712) is observed. In 1991, strike activity between the months of July and December intensified after the government had granted a number of concessions in the field of minimum wages, family allowances and had established some changes in legal provisions related to collective bargaining as embodied in the "framework" agreements (signed in May 1990, which we have already discussed), in which business sectors had actively participated. The mobilization took a long time to become a reality, given the commitment of workers to the transition to democracy, but it was carried out135.

Table No.3 Labor indicators in Chile during the period 1990-1991

The analysis of the leaders of the CUT, expressed during their first Congress between the 28th and 31st of October 1991, occured in this context of growing labor unrest, due to the continuity of neoliberal policies implemented during the Pinochet regime and supported by

135 In reference to this situation, Francisco Zapata (1992: 712-713) states that "in the absence of a will of explicit participation of the state in labor negotiations and against corporate reluctance to assume a posture of cooperation with the CUT, unions in several industries took a more militant attitude in comparison to what had been observed so far, which was expressed in the outbreak of a series of strikes".

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the economic policies of the coalition government. This situation of tension - between "new" and "old" - was expressed in the critical diagnosis made by delegates to the Congress, which, according to Zapata (1992: 717) noted:

a) Tendencies in the development process that, in effect, increased the substitution of labor for capital in the productive apparatus,

b) Exacerbation, as tariffs continue to fall, of the tendency to consume products manufactured abroad or import raw materials from other countries and, in general; and

c) Concentrate labor in labor-intensive sectors such as fruit agriculture (which is only a seasonal activity), commercial services and public services, education and health, or the textile industry, leaving others with a minimum amount of essential workers to control automated equipment, which will tend to replace manual labor.

Workers and their organizations, in order to " protect" the transition process, strongly limited their capacity to demand in the period between 1990 and 1992 (Pozner. 1999; Zapata, 1991; 1992),136 while the 90s meant the consolidation of neo-liberal policies as hegemonic, since an enormous freedom of domestic capital and transnational agents was developed to exploit natural resources, promote privatization (education, health, transportation, etc.), legitimize flexibility and labor precarity, the opening of markets (through the constant signing of NAFTA's), etc., and the central point: consolidate the anti- union policies of the dictatorship designed to discourage the processes of autonomy (of political parties and the government) and the strengthening of organizations of workers in labor relations (with the reform or abolition of the Labor Code of 1981).

136 In contrast, some manifestations of discontent may be mentioned which "were expressed in: a) the outbreak of labor conflicts in the Great Copper mining, in the steel plant of Huachipato and other factories; b) among teachers (120,000 members), medical and paramedical staff in hospitals, municipal employees, c) claims for the lag between the increase in labor productivity and the wages, d) in complaints about the presence of a very high level of open unemployment: in sectors of the youth population unemployment rate reached 12.4% compared with 9% of the rest of the working population, e) in the existence of a large number of people who are in extreme poverty, at least 11.9% of the population of the country and in particularly in rural areas representing 20.5% of this group, followed by unskilled workers and operators representing 27.5% of the group mentioned" (Zapata. 2004: 147).

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The complexity of this strategy involved an exercise in propaganda and saturation of communication, where the slogan of social consensus, as political action of the "transitional" government, delivered a model of subjectivity at work that shock the whole Chilean society with the closure of the social conflict as a political process and historical possibility. The industrial relations system was kept, which left (and still leaves) the development and strengthening of union actors to their own means, consolidating labor vulnerability and negating expectations of a return to the "protective role" that the State had traditionally had with the union prior to the dictatorship, as a component and weakest link of industrial relations137. With this, the asymmetric relationship that exists today between employers and workers was ensured, constituting a sophisticated way to discipline unionization, collective negotiation and union action.

The diagnosis of Arrieta (2003: 4) indicates that the CUT had achieved:

"until the years 1992-1993 (...) great accomplishments in the annual negotiation of a series of national agreements such as minimum wage, pension increases and readjustments of the public sector in general and in certain particular branches, such as health and education".

However this negotiating trend, "did not mean an internal balance of organic and directional strengthening of the Chilean labor movement, but rather (mainly since 1994), the dominant phenomena of "fragmentation of trade unions, decreasing the number of affiliates and increasing the number of unions" (Arrieta 2003: 4), which would prevail as a trend until today.

The legislation enacted in 1991 maintained the same structure in terms of the types of unions and voluntary affiliation; however modifications that reduce the requirements to form unions in small businesses were introduced. In particular, it was established that only

137 The elections to the National Executive Committee (CEN) in Congress of the CUT of 1991 reveal that, despite the criticisms and differences that many delegates expressed regarding government policy, the political commitment was still important. The correlation of forces within the CEN of the CUT showed that delegates to the First Congress clearly valued the principles of democratic government (Zapata 1992).

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8 people were required to form a union in companies with fewer than fifty employees, provided they represent over 50% of all workers138 (Larraín & Vergara 2001).

At the same time, the coalition accepted the concept of the need for labor market flexibility without much intervention of the state in the relations between workers and employers. Basically, they did not want to interrupt the process of accumulation with changes in labor market regulation. In order to sustain the economic model, the Coalition had to pay more attention to the satisfaction of employers rather than workers, and/or articulate increasingly complex strategies of reconciliation with the labor movement.

Faced with this situation (which would continue on through two decades of "transition") in which the presence of the state was limited, coupled with the hostility of employers to unionization, it would be logical to think that workers required (and require) strong unions to take advantage of market opportunities (Drake 2003), and not shrink before the threats of labor flexibility and labor precarity. However, despite the fact that this change never came from political parties nor from the diverse governments of the collation, a radical separation between unions and the government was never really produced (Zapata 2004; Drake 2003).

For example, we can cite the case of collective negotiation in Chile, where

"the reforms of 1991 allow multi-tenancy bargaining by agreement of the parties (with the consent of the employer), i.e. it removes the ban that existed of negotiating beyond the trading company. It also provides that agreements would be valid for those who subscribed to it and for new workers by mutual consent of the parties. Moreover, the new legislation maintain the above structure in that the collective bargaining can be performed by unions and/or joined for this purpose" (Coloma & Rojas 2001: 502).

138 Like Coloma and Rojas said: "among other measures to strengthen trade union activity, the possibility of forming unions was recognized as well as the possibility to regulate their operations, and changes in trade union organizations were introduced regarding privileges and permissions of their leaders" (Coloma & Rojas. 2001).

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This was obviously a cosmetic reform, since everything was designed to the will of the employer to negotiate (or not) in an inter-enterprise model, which in practice never took place139, thus revealing the reality and character of this reform.

Moreover, the economy became increasingly dependent on the world capitalist system of production, and thus inevitably removed the material bases of the development policies of previous decades. The free trade agreements that Chile signed with Mexico (1991), Canada (1995), the European Union (2002), United States (2003) and South Korea (2004) sparked strong pressures for a deepening of the restructuring of the Chilean economy focused towards the international market140 (Zapata. 2004: 149).

The deepening of restructuring involved, at the same time, a policy of disregard vis-a-vis union freedoms and of protection of workers’ rights, which were preserved in the "dictatorial matrix" as a way to prevent the development of labor disputes (and/or political, as part of the formula of "governance") making workers their strategic focus as a political- critical force, active and directly, like an important part of the production of social relations associated with neo-liberalism. This resulted in a series of labor reforms, which far from strengthening unionism, was dedicated to support the corporate sector, identifying with the so-called "labor flexibility" (Soto 2008).

Labor reforms increased the asymmetry of labor relations and authorized employers to: "a) hire replacements when workers are on strike141; b) establish temporary employment

139 The first example of inter-company negotiations would have to wait until 2007. In that year the strike of forestry workers of Arauco in the Bío Bío region was conducted. With high work pressure on a strategic sector of the national production such as forestry, marked by high outsourcing in a region rich in tradition and working culture, the strike ended with the murder, at the hands of the police, of an operator: Rodrigo Cisternas. 140 Zapata (2004: 149-150) complements this, noting that "there is an attempt to convert trans- nationalization of domestic market into a state policy, beyond the economic programs of governments and outside the scope of alternative projects, which democratically, a regime could imagine. This has been the neoliberal bias of the policy applied by the coalition in charge of protected democracy". 141 The reform of 1991 restored, on the right to strike, "its indefinite duration and those which set conditions – which previously did not exist - so that the company may temporarily replace strikers from day one. Thus, to replace them from the first day the employer's final offer should include, at least, the readjustment of wages according to the CPI, and if not, the possibility of replacement arises only after awareness of fifteen days of strike. Also, when the conditions for hiring replacements occur, individual

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contracts that allow weekly working hours of 30 hours, paid per hour; c) establish internship contracts for young people between 18 and 24 paid below the minimum wage; and d) establish the alternate week in which time of work would be distributed" (Zapata 2004: 148 - 149).

This tendency resulted in jobs being subjected to a process of precarity, accompanied by flexible working conditions, powerless and disciplined unions, and a network of privatized and limited social welfare services. This is how

"some workers faced difficult changes in their workplace, such as flexibility, fragmentation, precarity of employment, temporary work, subcontracting, long hours, and mechanization. Now the biggest problem was not employment, but the quality of it. Therefore, a survey in 1998 showed that 53% of the population was of the opinion that the economy had improved in democracy, but 83% felt certain that their own lives had not improved" (Drake 2003: 153).

In this context, facts like the existence of: a) small unions with few members, reduced to the business sector; b) the emergence of parallelism, atomization and disunity; and c) a large number of unions in retreat demonstrated objectively that unionism had lost significant strength relative to its activity in the early nineties (Espinoza & Yanes 1998).

This dynamic of exclusionary integration laid the structural basis for how the international economic crisis was experienced. Was develop a slow process of adaptation, produced by the difficulties encountered by the organizations of workers to resume their actions and their own role in an economic, social and political context. At the same time, the unions entered in a violent and deep process of change for the new structural conditions (Espinoza & Yanes 1998).

workers may rejoin their work from the fifteenth day after it has been made effective, and in those cases where only replacements can be hired after fifteen days, workers on strike may rejoin after thirty days. With the above regulations individual reinstatement could only occur after 30 days of strike" (Coloma & Rojas 2001: 503).

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In the midst of this whirlwind, the unionism of the nineties and its social and physical environment were not those of the early '70s, although "part of its national leadership was the same and even when part of its historical organizational structures continued to exist" (Campero 2000: ix) or rather been restored.

The CUT was paralyzed by an internal crisis of major proportions, "the annual agreements were abandoned and no decisions were made or agreements materialized of organizational strengthening agree in union events" (Arrieta 2003: 4), which produced certain breaks and internal fractures and facilitated the hegemony of the neo-corporatist wing dependent on political parties of government to strengthen its position in labor relations and control outbreaks of democratization and reforms in labor legislation.

The continuity of the legal framework that was responsible for regulating the working space, i.e. the persistence of an asymmetrically arranged model with respect to labor relations between employers and workers, meant that many of the expectations generated by the return to democracy would evaporate in the face of ongoing a political attrition with respect to the credibility of policies of parties and a loss of legitimacy and credibility, not only in the Christian Democratic leaders, but in unionism in general, as a new economic- aristocratic focus within the increasingly unstable working class.

As Ulloa (2003) points out, in 1992 unions counted 724,065 affiliate members, whereas in 1998 this number had been reduced to 600,000, with a tendency to towards smaller unions, as in 1989 there were 7118 unions while in 1998 there were 13.000. The contrast between these 13,000 unions is significant, considering only the unions that remained active, which had reached 7,349 and which at the same time demonstrated the wear and difficulties that union activity faced in maintaining a foothold in the space of labor relations142.

In the 90's, no actions or labor law reform which structurally encouraged unionization and union membership occurred. This trend demonstrates the decline of affiliation and

142 To delve deeper into this analysis we suggest reviewing paragraph 3.3.2.1 on trends in union membership.

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collective negotiation, (Table No. 4) in which one encounters difficulties representing a number of categories of workers (Salinero 2004; Campero 2000). This arises mainly from the changes and transformation of the economic structure and the composition of employment (Díaz. 1991; Campero 2000; Salinero 2006), as well as from technological change.

These changes created a very difficult situation for labor movement, losing his capacity to be part of decision making, and losing his role in the public debate, as it "seems to be apparently less critical in the formation of the major social, political and economic decisions" (Campero 2000: vi).

Table No. 4. Active existing unions, unionized workers and unionization rate

(Annual Series: 1985-2000)

Years Current active Unions Unionization Rate Unions Total Population in a trade union Unionized Unionized Nº Growth Nº Dif. the Growth population / population Index year Index Occupied (employed befote % (base 1985) workforce workers) / *100 Salaried Work Force *100 1985 3.741 100 360.963 5,1 100 9,7 13,8 1986 4.037 108 386.987 7,2 107 10,0 12,3 1987 4.406 118 422.302 9,1 117 10,6 12,9 1988 4853 130 446.194 5,7 124 10,4 12,8 1989 5.388 144 507.616 13,8 141 11,4 14,2 1990 6.672 178 606.812 19,5 168 13,4 16,6 1991 7.707 206 701.355 15,6 194 15,1 18,3 1992 8.323 222 724.065 3.2 201 14,8 17,9 1993 7.974 213 684.361 -5,5 190 13,4 16,0 1994 7.981 213 661.966 -3,3 183 12,9 15,6 1995 7.505 201 637.570 -3,7 177 12,3 14,4 1996 7.474 200 627.666 -1,6 174 11,8 14,3 1997 7.446 199 617.761 -1,6 171 11,5 13,2 1998 7.439 199 611.535 -1,0 169 11,3 13,0 1999 7.057 189 579.996 -5,2 161 10,7 12,4 2000 7.659 205 595.495 2,7 165 11,1 12,5 Source: Salinero (2006).

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Thus a series of obstacles for unionism become visible (Espinoza & Yanes 1998; Campero

2000). These obstacles detected by Espinoza and Yanes (1998: 3-4) can be identified as:

a) Lack of knowledge of workers with respect to basic aspects of effective industrial action (labor and union regulations, role of the leader and purpose of the union) and asymmetry of knowledge with respect to the employer;

b) The lack of interest from workers due to the an inability of the leadership to channel affiliation, and because of a bias towards the union as a "personal cost" subject to a potential employer disciplinary punishment;

c) Individualism as a lack of direction with respect to the collective;

d) The fear of consequences for employment, due to ill will of the employer towards the role of the union and a number of anti-union measures/practices143.

Analyzing the obstacles and the new context for unionization, Jorge Salinero (2006: 110) notes a relationship between changes in union affiliation in the period between 1985 and 2004 and "changes in the composition of the employed workforce, especially because of the higher relative importance of self-employed men and women in the paid labor force".

In addition, one can add the effects of the "Asian crisis" of the late 90s, which placed unionism in a position of defending existing jobs, and strengthened the new corporate model of the early decade of the 90s in the discussing of labor policy.

This neo-corporatist model meant, in electoral terms, that the vast majority of trade unions support the coalition of democratic parties in the victories of the 1988 plebiscite and in the presidential election of Christian Democrat, Patricio Aylwin (1990-1994) in 1989, as well

143 From a study of the Department of Labor of 1997, "the most common anti-union practice is the dismissal of staff to undermine the organization...the second most common union attitude…is the offer of better benefits to non-union workers (with the extension of the benefits achieved during collective negotiation to non-union workers and to those not involved in the negotiations, while simultaneously the employer tries to un-sharpen collective negotiation, offering economic improvements to those who do not negotiate and making individual agreements with them)...and finally the harassment that focuses primarily on union leaders" (Espinoza & Yanes. 1998).

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as of Christian Democrat Eduardo Frei (1994-2000) and the socialist governments of Ricardo Lagos (2000-2005), and Michel Bachelet (2006-2010).

The election realized by unionism is a reply to the political composition of the labor movement, which retains the features of the previous decade, and shows a high presence of the parties of the coalition in its leadership, but with a change in the majorities leading the union movement in the following decade (Table No. 5). This fact suggests a relative sphere of politicization of unionism, which finds its limits and contours in corporate agreements that are developed in negotiations relative to partial economic struggles and in the profound influence of the public sector over the private sector concerning political directions within the Chilean labor movement.

Table No. 5. Political Parties in the Chilean labor movement (CUT) From 1992 to 2000 Political composition of the Chilean labor movement from 1992 to 2000. Political Parties 1992 1996 1998 2000 Christian Democracy 34,4 25,8 8,8 15,62 Communist 20,3 28,1 35,5 24,72 Socialist 34,1 34,1 44,2 39,88 Worker Peasant Movement 2,3 1,7 1,1 Radical 3,7 7,5 7,2 4,96 Others 5,2 3,4 4,4 5,3 Source: Arrieta (2003).

At this juncture, and in contrast to its trajectory during this century, for the first time Chilean unionism is absent from the national political debate (Zapata 2004: 151-152; Aravena & Nuñez 2011), although it is influenced directly by political parties of government, serving a protective shield of the demands of the working class itself, encouraging the creation of a corporate bureaucracy which develops its influences through negotiation and lobbying in politics and in social conflict, ultimatelymoving towards social dialogue that paradoxically excluded the most precarious workers in the economy.

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7.4.- Chile in the Twenty-First Century. Social Dialogue and Labor Conflict (2000-2010)

In this cycle, the coalition governments established a tripartite alliance between workers, corporations and government, with the strategy of social dialogue as a way of resolving labor disputes and improvement of the neo-corporatist model of negotiation and labor agreements.

This strategy's main objective was to "legitimize the scheme of deregulation of the economy" attempting to "thereby ensure social stability needed for economic expansion" (Guzmán 2004: 213). This represented a necessary policy for the Stateaiming at obtaining the consent of the union movement so as to sustain the character of the relations of production that the social regime of reproduction required, which involved a serious difficulty for union leaderships because, as a consequence of the achievement gap for unionism and the working class vis-à-vis business actors, the members' trust in them eroded.

The Coalition sought to relegate unionism to a role of merely negotiating workers' demands, mediated by new corporate institutions. This cycle, which we define as "the socialist movement", with the governments of President Ricardo Lagos (2000-2005) and Michelle Bachelet (2006-2010), is characterized by a reconstruction of the relationship between the State and the Confederation of Workers (CUT), which would have an impact in terms of labor reforms, strengthening the labor dialogue and the emergence of a new base of the labor dispute.

7.4.1.- The “Socialist Government”: A New Workplace Issue?

While some analyses (Aravena & Nuñez 2011) make a distinction between the first period of coalition governments (1990-2000) and the second period (2000-2010), it is difficult to locate in this process the benchmarks to identify a change in the relationship with the "labor issue" and especially with the issue of labor precarity.

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The continuity of the Labor Code and therefore of the model of labor relations, will continue to shape the relationship between unions, labor precarity and corporations, so the array of "labor issue" will remain subject to the same institutional framework.

In this regard, the diagnosis of Zapata (2004: 151) which notes that "employers manifest until today in large numbers, to enter a true coalition on the level of production", which is mediated by an asymmetric ineffectiveness of models of collective bargaining at a regulation level, since:

"the purpose of the labor authorities to stay out of collective negotiation and encourage coalition between the factors of production contradicts with the government's need to maintain a firm coalition from the political point of view" (Zapata 2004: 151).

This is a contradictory phenomenon that has left the union world without protection and state regulation, in the sense of terms that are necessary to generate more equitable models of distribution of income, and to counteract the processes of labor precarity within the workplace (Palomino 2008). According to Aravena and Nuñez (2011: 120-129), the main labor reforms implemented during the government of Lagos and Bachelet were:

(a) The Labor Code Reform: the expansion of the charters for workers involved in collective bargaining; the problem of access to information for unions in the collective bargaining; discouragement of signing collective agreements because its informality and the anti-union character from employers; higher compensations for unjustified dismissal and for anti-union practices; greater autonomy for unions in managing their assets and statutes; reduction of working hours from 48 to 45 per week.

(b) Unemployment Insurance: was regulated by law 19.728, it took effect in October 2002 and is organized via individual severance accounts for each worker. The

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insurance is financed by tripartite funds established for the category of permanent workers, the quote equalling 3% of the employee's monthly salary. Of this amount, 0.6% is paid by the worker and 2.4% by the employer, but "if the contract is fixed- term, for work or task, the contribution is fully covered by the employer, an amount that goes to the worker's individual account" (Aravena & Nuñez 2011: 123).

(c) Labor Justice Reform: since 2008 this reform has promoted the creation of new labor courts and ways of pension collection, along with new administrative procedures, which was "intended to allow a specialized and prompt judicial treatment" with the idea of "making resolution of conflicts at work more rapid and equitable, expecting that trials which were previously prolonged for several years would now only last a couple of months" (Aravena & Nuñez 2011: 124-125). To this are added oral and public hearings, "allowing the parties to meet with the judge to get their testimony and evidence across", providing all workers with “free counsel for purposes of their defense" (Aravena & Nuñez 2007: 125).

(d) Law of Subcontracting: Law 20,123 was enacted in 2007, aiming to reform subcontracted work and regulate the supply of workers. The situationin this area had continued to operate informally for many years, creating "a situation of triangulation of the standard employment relationship, from the intervention of a company which by supplying workers can avoid a contractual link, even when workers remain under the command and the direction of the company user of the work" (Soto 2008: 23). By simultaneously, and paradoxically, "redefining outsourcing, transient service companies or suppliers (in transitional or occasional tasks) and establishing the principle of joint solidarity of the company" (Soto 2008: 23), it establishes the legality of outsourced, flexible and precarious employment forms in Chile – with broad implications for the quality of employment and segmentation of the working class.144.

144 Although in 2006 Magdalena Echeverría (2006) estimated that 35% of jobs in our economy would be of an outsourced, dependent type, figures of the last Labor Survey (2011: 97) showed that "more than a third of the companies in the country used outsourcing (37.8%)", making outsourcing a practice relative to firm size, from 29.5% in the case of microenterprises to 53.2% in large companies.

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For some analysts, the diagnosis regarding the impacts of these labor reforms is focused "on the growth of Trade Unions, the increase in negotiation and mediation processes, less conflict, and so on", which continues to be, in our opinion and after having analyzed the trends of unionism in Chapter 3, a rather biased judgment of the union reality in the country. While we can add the fact that "new opportunities for dialogue have been constructed between the Department of Labor, employers and workers, and the Regional Committees of Users (CRUS), representing an important contribution to the knowledge of labor legislation and improvement of labor relations" (Frias 2008: 172), these same opportunities have not led to real growth in the rates of union affiliation (Table no. 6), nor to an increase in the annual numbers of collective bargaining and the use of collective instruments.

Table No. 6. Active existing unions, unionized workers and unionization rate (Annual Series: 2001-2010)

Years Current active Unions Unionization Rate Unions Total Population in a trade Unionized Unionized union population / population Nº Nº Dif. the year Occupied workforce (employed before % *100 workers) / Salaried Work Force *100 2001 7.410 599.495 0,7 10,9 12,4 2002 8.149 618.930 3,2 11,2 12,7 2003 8.967 669.507 8,2 11,8 13,4 2004 9.414 680.351 1,6 11,6 13,3 2005 9.148 676.368 - 1,6 11,5 13,4 2006 9.424 703.706 3,9 11 12,8 2007 9.365 724.606 2,9 11 12,9 2008 9.340 801.251 9,6 11,9 13,9 2009 9.776 837.055 4,3 12,5 14,6 2010 9.871 858.571 2,6 11,7 13,9

Source: Department of Labor. (Statistical series 1990 – 2012).

Given the powerlessness in light of the lack of political changes related to collective bargaining, workers are advocating their “trust” in logic and tactics that helps to overlap the institutional weakness available to the union, due to the nature of labor relations in Chile. In this sense, "dialogue" with corporations will be one of them.

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This new institutionalism of labor dialogues (Frias 2008: 141) cements the spaces of coordination between the agents of production and moves unionism towards a neo- corporatist tactic145 (Guzmán 2004), limiting its reach (to the workplace) with a profound weakness in negotiation, while at the same time it loses credibility and interest among workers, as it has abandoned historical methods of autonomy, union democracy and independence of unionism.

In any case, and despite the nature of the aforementioned labor reforms, the labor balance of the government of Lagos, according to historian Gabriel Salazar (2006: 36), exhibits several important facts:

First (1) The prevalence of precarious type contracts (temporary, without any long- term prospect and/or contract), (2) high rates of absolute surplus value covered under the "labor flexibility", (3) greater increase in self-employment than in employment on the basis of a wage contract, (4) absence of large strike movements, and (5) low "professional development" of the great labor force.

In these conditions, which we have previously reviewed in Chapter 3, the legacy of the relationship between the "protected democracy", the logic of discipline and syndicalism (Zapata 2004) is perpetuated. While there is an institutional continuity of labor relations in the "socialist moment" which contributes to the discipline as well as the weakness of the union, "the waiver" to historic objectives of unionism prevails, which prevents it from fulfilling a political role that could threaten and question the status of labor precarity.

145 Frias’ explanation of the mediation model clarifies the characteristics of the mediation process. "In relation to the mediation system, it consists of a model of conflict resolution in which the parties involved seek to generate arrangements through a neutral third party who acts as moderator to facilitate communication. This system works in the Department of Labor since December 1st of 2001 and, to date, has received a good evaluation. Its main objective is to incorporate in the field of industrial relations a culture of dialogue and collaboration through the peaceful pursuit of agreements and settlements and of solutions to collective disputes. There are three types of mediations: petition from a party, scheduled and reactive - the latter in case of unforeseen emergencies -". (Frías. 2008: 172)

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This waiver will remain effective, powered by the relationship between political parties in government and union leaderships, which have a character of passive subordination – with the exception, perhaps, of the situation arising in the annual negotiation of the readjustment of salaries in the public sector, which become more central for the CUT, in recognition of its constituency being mainly composed by workers of the service sector with the presence and the leadership of the Socialist Party in most professional "white collar" associations.

In this period, and in order to preserve the "protected democracy," the place of encounter and space of agreement between the government and the union movement was the "Panel of Social Dialogue. This panel allowed to address the issue of labor flexibility or adaptability in more consensual terms" (Frias 2008: 175), which in practice meant making way for labor reforms such as the Law of Subcontracting and Temporary Services (2002).

Even as the dialogue and corporatist logics were dominant in the first period of the "socialist movement", "a series of labor conflicts has been recorded which has affected various sectors and activities, mainly by demands concerning readjustments, poor working conditions, anti-union practices etc." (Frias 2008: 173), which have given way to the creation of new sources of labor dispute146. The trends that mark the development of the labor conflict in the last decade in Chile are characterized by a concurrence of legal and illegal practices. Between the years 2000-2006 there was a total of 1,345 strikes. In the cycle of strikes of the year 1998-2006, the main causes of strike are strictly economic, at 70.4%, followed by 7.4% of protests for change of dependency or ownership of the company, and the same figure for the demand for better general conditions.

All elements that are combined and part of the redefinition of space and ways of working, which in turn articulate and are the result of the appearance of a new unionism, how will found fractures in its unitary conception, like the CUT’s project had since 1988.

7.4.2.- Fractures and Tensions. Decomposition of Unitary Project

146 See Section 7.4.3 in this Chapter.

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Facts like these were the ones which installed inside the CUT a harsh dispute which ended with a division and massive disaffiliation of unions, federations, etc., and the emergence of new references for unionism.

The most important trend of continuity in the labor movement's current situation is one marked, firstly, by the action of the CUT, which today constitutes, from their directions and perspective, the decomposition of the Unitary project defended in the 90s147, and, secondly, by the crisis of a democratic model of organization in its internal dynamics, which is important for understanding the contradictory process that has culminated in the opening and diversification of the number of unions and their corresponding political opinions in the country.

Significant in this regard is the foundation in 1995 of the Autonomous Coordinator of Workers (CAT) of Social-Christian orientation, which was institutionalized as the Autonomous Central of Workers in 2003; the disaffiliation of the CUT, in 2004, from the National Confederation of Federations, Workers Union of the Food Industry, Tourism, Hotel and Restaurant, and Related Derivatives (COTIACH) with the corresponding constitution of the General Confederation of Workers (CGT), as part of the consolidation of the Union Movement for Changes (MOSICAM)148; the conformation of Workers'

147 Another relevant aspect here is what was noted by Arrieta (2003: 3), who states that "the current CUT is the result of a political decision taken in that year (1990) between the different political forces present in the trade unions, which did not necessarily respond to structured criteria as political parties past or present. It was a decision that involved, among other things, leaving the central thesis of creating ideological centrals and moving to a communal life under one single trade union structure". 148 Regarding this process, Frías (2008: 181) adds that "likewise, they endorsed the idea of becoming a legal Union Organization (in this case, as Confederation), an idea that was already proposed in 2000, but had then received no support. That is how it became a Confederation, organizing the first Congress of the General Confederation of Workers (CGT), which is the union of the Organizations of the Union Movement for Change (MOSICAM). The CGT endorsed the Platform of Struggle and the Program of the COTIACH, but updated them. In November of 2004, its statutes were reformed, now being configured as a legal Confederation, not only as a movement. It also added the assertion of the textiles, hotels, gastronomes, and metallurgical workers, integrating around 8 or 9 sectors. They have no national or international affiliation; they foster independence, autonomy and transparency, and state to follow the Unionism of Luis Emilio Recabarren and Clotario Blest (both historical leaders of the working class in Chile)".

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Collectives, with a policy that could be placed to the left of the CUT149; and the National Union of Workers (UNT), founded in 2004 from a split within the leadership of the CUT, with an openly neo-corporatist discourse of autonomy from political parties and a Christian Democratic leadership.

In a way, trying to lessen the issues of these fractures within the CUT, Frías (2008: 182) notes that:

"along with regretting these resignations, the CUT has tried to position itself on the national scene, presenting various demands in favor of the workers. In them it points towards the shortcomings of the democratization process, particularly in regard to the improvement of wages, labor, employment, social security, and union practice conditions etc. Along with this, it shows a wider view of the country and its development, stating the need to begin the second exporting phase, as well as the creation of start-ups to combat unemployment. It is also worried about the impact of free trade agreements, NAFTA, on employment as well as on the reform of the labor courts, on social security and even on the current Political configuration”.

This was not plotted in any overt political protest, nor through a strike or any other direct action, such as a general strike, but was rather part of the policy of dialogue by which the State had co-opted the labor movement and through which unionism journeyed since its return to democracy.

The following years were a continuation and "enhancement" of the model of social dialogue. Instances and programs were created, such as the Sub Secretary of Labor with the opening of a fund for the "upgrading of Industrial Relations and Union Development", modernization being understood as a step towards more flexible relations between workers and employers in terms of recruitment, in addition to the "Center for collective labor

149 According to a public statement of the Collective of Workers of the Metropolitan Region in 2008, it would cease its public political activities, since it had not managed to achieve the "intention to build a force of opinion and action capable of gravitating in the left-wing world and the labor movement. In this regard, we find a stagnation in our development". See the worker’s Mail. http://www.cctt.cl/cctt/index.htm

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disputes mediation and individual conciliation" aiming to generate solutions to problems within the companies themselves through "conciliators" in order to avoid strikes or demonstrations. These are all devices generated to enhance the dialogical logic and exile the possibility of conflict in the work space.

Accordingly, the actuality of the CUT, as the most important central, as far as history, affiliations and political "recognition" of the State are concerned150, is marked by a basic loss of credibility, legitimacy and representation among workers. The CUT by 2012 represented only 22% of unions in Chile, which can be attributed to:

a) A stagnant organization: stagnant in the sense of the still contradictory relationship between a traditional-authoritarian unionism versus a unionism with class and movementist based features;

b) A bureaucratic organization: bureaucratic in terms of the mechanisms involved in decision-making and forms of work, a lack of administrative transparency in finances, the nature of participation of its affiliates and the election of its leaderships151; and

c) An authoritarian organization: authoritarian because it has not been open to a dialogue on an equal footing with the ideological unions that were formed in the last decade, nor with factions and critical voices within in order to begin a process of internal and external democratization, i.e. to strengthen the union movement.

The labor movement, at present, exhibits a heterogeneity of forms, has diversified to some extent its ability of representation and political directions, overflowing the institutional- legal possibilities of action and organization (Alvarez 2009; Lopez 2009). It is a

150 We should add here that the International Labor Organization recognizes three trade union confederations in Chile: the CUT, CAT and UNT. 151 This connects with the public letter signed by various union leaders where they require to convene a special national congress with re-foundational character and to have early elections of the NDC and the CUT. See Wader, P. "Rebelión en la CUT" Published in "Punto Final", Issue No. 737, July 8. 2011

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contradictory phenomenon which has fragmented, on the one hand, a series of trade unions, federations and confederations, while organizing and creating cores of "new" workers with different social expectations, on the other hand.

In this phenomenon it is possible to distinguish dynamics of continuity and dynamics of eruption. The new forms assumed by the organization of workers in terms of finding models of collectives, coordinators, etc. which go beyond the legal forms of unions, federations and confederations, show new expressions of the world of work and its actors, trying to challenge the levels of surveillance and punishment from employers (with respect to the constitution of the union) on the one hand, and secondly, as part of the phenomenon of disaffiliation and union inactivity, must be understood as a limiting legal-bureaucratic- regulation for the most precarious and exploited workers of the model of accumulation of Chilean capital (Salinero 2006)152, as well as of the unemployed and unaffiliated. This in turn constitutes the emergence of a new subjectivity into the multiform force which today is challenges the union movement, and which is the connecting link to the establishment of a labor movement that ignores the law (Arbazúa 2008).

This breakthrough represents a challenge for unions in terms of the need to strengthen, rebuild and extend a common identity of the working class (Moody 2001), and, secondly, to develop expressions of collective action involving non-union organizations, as they are faced today with the genesis of a unionism with movementist features such as: a) the presence of internal democratic processes understood in a broad sense, through which a strong identification between leaders and bases is established, b) strong solidarity commitments around the transformation of the economic order, and c) the extension of justice, despite the heterogeneity of the base (Bersusán 2000).

152 The case of intra-company unions is iconic in this area, as their possibility of negotiation relies on the good will of the employer; this clearly discourages union membership.

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7.4.3.- New Outbreaks of Labor Disputes Precarious Employment in Action.

Without giving a deterministic economic view, we can establish that the international economic situation that precipitated the rise in prices of commodities in the middle of the last decade, and in the second part of the "socialist moment," allowed to (a) speed up a process of accumulation of capital and economic growth, marked by neo-extractivism, which has emphasized the Chilean growth model at a global level as part of the role of the peripheral economies in the context of global production, while (b) increasing the recomposition of the labor movement in sectors of export-oriented production of raw materials and strengthening their power of negotiation and organization.

The complexity of the process showed that just as a flexibilization offensive of labor practices in Chile was developed, with a focus on the activities of young people and women, and their incorporation into the labor market, at the same time a resistance of the working class to this offense started to develop. This occurred through the formation of a union movement that was picking up strength in national politics and publicly addressing the issue of "labor" and "labor precarity", referring to the working conditions, salaries, contracts, etc.. of the working class in the country by questioning the unequal model of income distribution and the over-exploitation of labor.

Despite what happened in the first part of the "socialist moment", the mechanisms of containment such as "social dialogue", especially in strategic sectors of production (such as salmon industry, mining and forestry), exhausted their potential to function as a device of consensus in labor relations to promote tripartite agreements focused on a neo-corporatist logic (Falabella & Lydia 2010).

Social dialogue showed its profound weakness since, on the one hand, the employers kept attacking workers' rights, especially those of unionized workers, while on the other, the institutional mechanisms of negotiation had not promoted better working conditions but instead boosted labor precarity. For example, if we only consider the period between

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January 2000 and March 2001, we can note that the Labor Department received more than 87,000 complaints for non-compliance with labor standards. Meanwhile, according to the CUT, about 207 complaints are performed every day, almost 9 per hour. Topping the list is the non-declaration of pension contributions, unpaid wages and not having written contracts, totaling more than 22,000 claims153.

This situation dynamically begins to reverse, slowly and controlled but steadily with the growth of employees in processes of negotiation and strikes between 2006 and 2008, and of the institutionalization of a greater regulatory power, through Labor Inspectorate and the Labor Courts, created in 2007.

Moreover some actions by workers occur which threaten labor policy and the terms of existing collective negotiation until today, entering frameworks of illegality, but legitimate from the point of view of workers, where precarious working conditions, wage inequality, union persecution, ineffectiveness of the labor code (for the protection of labor rights), and institutions of the Ministry of Labor as regulators allegedly to ensure compliance with regulatory frameworks in areas such as security damage, payment of pension contributions were questioned. All this core of slogans constituted a de-centering of industrial action in the workplace, and re-energized the political debate from the union movement.

This restructuring found its greatest expression in the collective negotiation processes in the areas of copper mining, forestry and industrial aquaculture, which are strategic centers of Chile's export model which was going through a time of rising commodity prices internationally. Three milestones can be noted in this process:

153 The CUT estimated that by 2001 about 385 thousand workers in the country work without this guarantee. Additionally, there are no records of their attendance, which allows for avoiding the payment of overtime and lengthening the working day. The "law of the chair" is another one of the least respected, despite being the most widely reported. According to Martinez, president of the CUT, 99% of large companies, such as department stores and supermarkets, do not comply with the provision, concluding that, effectively, it is not in force. Other lesser known but equally binding , but often not respected regulations are: the right to bathrooms in hygienic conditions, separated for men and women; drinking water; permission to feed an infant and the ban to sexually harass any employee, among others.

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i) The strike by subcontract workers of CODELCO in 2007: copper workers have historically been associated with good pay conditions and a high social status, a sort of "labor aristocracy" of the industrialization development model of the 1960's and early 1970's. This situation was severely eroded by neoliberal policies, the implementation of management strategies and outsourcing (Jordana & Torres 2013). In 2007 subcontract workers of state-owned CODELCO conducted a strike aimed at starting a debate on subcontracting under the slogan "equal work for equal pay", calling into question the segmentation of the working class and the precariousness of its sources of employment as well as the connection between subordination and inadequate working conditions exhibited by the foundations for economic growth in the mining sector.

j) The Negotiation and Inter-company Strike of Arauco Cellulose in 2007: about 5,000 workers providing services to Bosques Arauco, one of the companies owned by Anacleto Angelini154, went on strike on April 30th of 2007, after a process of negotiation locked by two points: remunerations and contract conditions. Wages which in many cases did not reach the minimum wage as a base, had a structure that promoted labor intensification, the extension of the working day and over- exploitation at work, in order to achieve an income suited for the needs of vital reproduction of workers and their families155. While the terms of the subcontracts made labor relations unstable and precarious, the repressive police action156 and the

154 For many years, Forbes Magazine has considered forestry magnate Anacleto Angelini, owner of Arauco Cellulose, as one of the richest men in the world. In 2007 he ranked 119 in the Forbes ranking, with an estimated fortune of six billion USD. Eleodoro Matte, owner of the CMPC, was ranked 137, with 5.6 billion USD dollars. Both businessmen control the main timber holdings of the country: Matte the CMPC and Angelini Arauco Cellulose.

155 Pascual Sagredo, president of the transportation workers' union, stated that what is required is that the minimum wage is respected as a base salary, as a floor to start negotiations. "You cannot raise children with 80 thousand Chilean pesos per month, but you cannot allow those who manage to finish High School to have to work for Arauco". This province can no longer be a factory of workers. What is achieved will directly benefit the area and its commerce. The pot of gold of the company is here, but 30 workers die each year because they had no safety or protective equipment to work". Chronicles Channel, available on-line: http://benjita.espacioblog.com/post/2007/05/05/central-noticias-huelgas-y-desordenes-con-victima-fatal

156 On May 3rd, after a peaceful takeover of the road between the city of Concepción and Arauco, in front of the facilities of Cellulose Arauco in the town of Horcones, the Special Forces of the police intervened, which ended with 6 wounded, more than 30 detained and one murdered worker.

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action of the government and the Church in the negotiation process, open a new public debate related to the precarity. Precarity was identified like the base which supported the “export boom” of forestry and wood industry, especially in the inequality and inequity between earnings of the Angelini economic group and the wages of workers.

k) The Strike of AquaChile workers in the Salmon Industry in 2006: in 2006, the company AquaChile was the largest in its sector nationwide. Upon concluding the collective agreement between workers and the company AquaChile, Unions No. 1 and No. 2 began collective bargaining. The request of the workers did not exceed 1% of the annual profits of the company, as indicated in their public statement, which read that "the company recognizes high figures achieved in the last three years. In 2004 it earned $26,104,119,910 million pesos. In 2005 it earned 50,798,891,570 pesos, and for 2006, 64,131,784,880 pesos are expected 157”. The demand of the workers, whose basic salaries ranged between 90,000 and 114,000 pesos, and which including various bonuses could amount to no more than 280 thousand pesos (liquid), asked for 26,000 pesos of readjustment, which only equaled 1% of the company profits.

With this it was possible to identify a new unionism and new union leaderships (Nuñez 2007; Calderon 2009; Baltera & Dussert 2010) that challenged inequalities between capitalist/transnational earnings and the reality of working and salary conditions, and gave way to the configuration of new strategic centers of union action158 and to tactics that were closer to the the origins of the traditional labor struggles (Vitale 1999; Alvarez 2009; Nuñez 2009).

157 In an interview with one of the employees of the company, in the context of a visit to the AquaChile plant in 2006, we asked "what was the basis for negotiation, and what are the reasons that trigger it"? The answer established its bases in the terms and the purpose of the previous collective agreement: "We are negotiating because the validity of the previous collective agreement has ended, and the basis of the negotiation is that AquaChile has increased its profits very considerably since 2003 to date, our requests are: the increase of salaries of workers, and we seek better benefits for our partners" (Julián, 2013c).

158 One could add here the agro-industrial sector, the retail sector, the communications sector (call centers) and the banking sector.

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This is how, despite all the structural conditions in which labor precarity is embodied, and the set of deterrent-disciplinary strategies that have tried to disrupt the political and social power of unions, a new labor movement began to articulate in Chile at the end of the past decade, which can be seen both in the diversification of organizations, these organizations' new leaderships, etc., as in its articulation with social movements (especially in the period from 2010 to 2012.) and local communities.

This process has been slow and inconsistent, as it was characterized in its development by the political turmoil of the institutional and political-cultural legacy of the military dictatorship and the new constellation of social forces critical of persistent neoliberal policies in Chilean society.

In fact, from the results and characteristics of this process, added to the organization and active participation of various social movements and organizations in Chilean politics, the action of the union movement managed to have a significant impact on public opinion and reinstated the debate of the "labor issue" which fueled the positioning and interpellation of social classes against a developing political conflict in which the fundamental problematic was the open rejection of neoliberal labor policies. This phenomenon was known as "the revival of the workers' strike" (Nuñez 2009; Aravena 2009).

In particular, this situation signified the recognition of the "labor precarity" by union speech as a motor of action and identification in its practices of vindication, negotiation and mobilization in the public arena (Alvarez 2005; Arbazúa 2009), which has created the basis for the emergence and articulation of new work identities. In this sense, we wish to extend the thesis of Rolando Alvarez in his text “The precarious Identity: Submission and Labor Resistance in Chile. The case of Precarious Salmon Workers, where he states:

"The tendency of large salmon companies to expand their employment base with plant workers has opened a very dynamic process that can lead to the crystallization of a "salmon identity” ... that is not directly related to the activity, but arises out of

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the need to break the cycle of poverty and survival. They are the "precarious identities", poorly politicized, but which can develop a consciousness of class rapidly, due to the extremely unfair conditions they are in" (Alvarez 2005).

This new configuration of "precarious identities" which are constantly subject to flexible oscillations of business interests, are the ones which have boosted the processes of subjectification and practices of industrial action, traversed by mediations typical of a new social, political and cultural context, where different phenomena of identification and collective action are expressed. These phenomena have opened a space for the expansion of the labor subject (De la Garza 2005), which is extendable not only to the aquaculture industry, but to areas where the manifestation of increasingly precarious and flexible forms of work, but also of union/labor resistance – joined by demonstrations of solidarity and work identity that transgress and go beyond the work space – have gained reality in productive relations.

The emergence of these new precarious identities constitutes the main base of the interpellation of the processes of accumulation of capital and labor exploitation and degradation, as well as of traditional union leaderships and of the neo-corporate and bureaucratic logic that guided its action until the midst of the "socialist moment". This interpretation challenges the boundaries of the individuals projects, because is directed at the public sphere, at the “social” area, at the set of agents that operate in promoting the accumulation model, i.e. the "neoliberal model" (Agacino 2003) and at assumptions that underpin their project in Chile.

While the effects of the capitalist crisis of 2008 and its rebound in export sectors weakened the objective position that these sectors had obtained in the public sphere, the fact is that the unionism of the end of the last decade has given birth to a new generation-specific political reference, not confined to the field of labor, but also in education, environmental policy, health, gender, etc.

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This process has accelerated in one way or another, the breakdown of traditional- authoritarian unionism and its leadership, and has opened perspectives to a reconstitution of a unitary and classist union project, which with movementist features (Waterman, 1993; Moody 2001; Frege & Kelly 2004), has raised awareness of the contradictions of the neoliberal and neo-extractivist accumulation model in Chile, and building bridges with other social movements and actors: here we see the gestation of a broad concept of "working class"159 which, considering the limits and redefinitions of the concept of "work", takes into account the importance of the links with other social actors as a structural element within the logic of domination and emancipation.

This has ultimately resulted in tendencies towards both he continuity of old forms and the emergence of new forms within the union movement, which currently operate in a contradictory manner, thus revealing the flaw in the neo-corporatist tradition and tripartite dialogue of the past and engendering an important “ideological relay” in terms of union action.

7.5.- The Legacy of the Socialist Government Unionism and its New Tactics

Although it is clear that in the Chilean case, a logic of high inequality marks the relation between corporate profits and salaries paid to employees, which we believe is evident in the realization of a political attitude, subjectively similar to one that drove the Chilean union movement in the last decade, characterized and consolidated in the capitalist crisis by the diversification of its tactics and strategies. These can be described as 9 major “blocks” of action:

1) Tactic of Methodical Dialogue with Society:

Leaders try to effectively pursue dialogue in all conditions and via any available institutional channels without sacrificing their fundamental demand. This approach,

159 Or we could talk about the class-that-lives-from-work. For a debate on this issue, See Antúnez (2003; 2005)

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although slow and despite having to go through a bureaucratic cycle due to labor institutionalism in Chile, generates public recognition, through action within the boundaries of legality and a communicational promotion of their demands, achieving, despite the media distortion of the conflict, sympathy from different sectors of the public and the union movement itself as part of a transverse climate of social consensus.

2) Comprehensive Tactical Knowledge of Utilities and Development of the Sector:

The knowledge of earnings, profits, exports (in dollars and in tons) as concluded from the increased flow of information at a technological and social level, and that of the labor reform so as to provide information to unions in processes of negotiation, gives the union a key position to practically expose the unequal contained within the model of accumulation in production, and the contradiction between the appropriation of productive labor in relation to the distribution of profits160.

3) Tactical Knowledge of Regulations and Laws Governing Collective Negotiation:

Although, a clear handling and knowledge of labor institutionalism can be seen, a clear management of the labor code with regard to its policies, which forces leaders to become agile in their recourse to public bodies of the Directorate of Labor and Labor Inspection, constantly denouncing the anti-union practices and labor detriment. This helps position them in the media, as part of the communication tactics, with accurate information on crimes that are constantly being committed by companies, within the communications tactics, and with more options to develop the negotiation processes without being harmed by corporate management.

4) Tactical Transmission of Experiences with regard to Negotiation in the Sector:

Workers demonstrate a broad knowledge of previous experiences and trajectories of negotiation, adding to those within each sector circulated through the oral transmission of stories in union meetings and coordination spaces. As a result, they begin to articulate an important learning process in which different elements are used in the steps they follow to

160 Marisol Rosas, President of Union N°1 tells newspaper “La Nación” on July 17th 2006, in reference to the development of AquaChile, that "it has grown a huge amount; it began investments in Costa Rica, bought all the shares of Aguas Claras and 80% of Robinson Crusoe. And now they want to change the production bonus to one that, in practice, implies a reduction of about forty thousand Chilean pesos".

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establish certain demands at their respective workplaces. In addition, this influences the content of demands and the pragmatism with respect to mobilization161. Here the experiences of union schools, job workshops and senior organizations (such as federations and confederations) are the main centers of transmission of this intangible knowledge.

5) Tactical Knowledge in Characterizing Entrepreneurship:

There is a clear idea about objective power in the political field managed by corporations, and a good sense of correlation and definition of the links between politics and the economy, leading to understand the "labor conflict", at an abstract-concrete level, as the exercise of a clash between social classes where the correlation of forces is grasped and internalized with coherence and applied practically and tactically in the field of strategies and tactics described here. In any case, the characterization of the enterprise and, for the other side, the union's classist speech, does not ensure success in labor disputes nor its development and sustainability.

6) Tactics Comparable to Standards in Developed Countries:

This fact is noteworthy since union actors are able to energize resources used by the ruling classes in government to promote the latter's legitimacy, using examples like the "Nordic- developed" models; “the development countries”, etc. The unions use them as a tactical and discourse weapons to publicly strengthen strike actions and criticism against the framework of labor relations in terms of safety and protection, strengthening of trading instruments, remunerations and protection for the union and its activity.

7) Union Unity as a Tactic of Strategic Strengthening:

There is a constant allusion to the potential strength of the organized working class in general, and to strikes in particular. This shows an understanding of the reality of labor that is accompanied by a sense of belonging and of “strategic stake” in the power of workers as an active subject of transformation of conditions of life, although in organizational terms,

161 After the statement made about how little 1% actually means (thinking this in terms of legitimizing and supporting them instead of questioning them), an officer responds that "of the strikes of 2001 in Marine Harvest, where nothing was achieved, 180 of 400 workers left, they were not received anywhere, they were not wanted due to the black lists that were circulating. We helped our partners as much as we could".

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unity is limited by the political orientation of the unions and top organizations such as federations and confederations.

8) Tactics of visibility and humanistic sensitivity:

With view to their employment situation, many workers are faced with extremely precarious conditions in terms of wages, working conditions, etc., which have a direct impact on other areas of their private life. The basic human condition of reproduction of life appears as a structuring element of the practice of workers protest, which is channeled through a discourse of "dignity" and "equality."

9) Tactical Collaboration with other Civil Society Organizations:

The presence of unions in the collaboration of protests and in developing demands of actors of the ecological, student, and cultural worlds, among others, shows a spread of the zones of influence and confluence of the union movement. Moreover, networking with institutions such as universities and NGOs opens up new opportunities for strengthening a collaborative relationship, of mutual assessment and support at the academic, professional and legal level between unions and a new "intelligentsia" dedicated to employment and labor issues.

In his preliminary diagnosis of the union movement during the government of Michelle Bachelet, López (2009: 7) states that:

"it is likely that instead of the predominance of political action – focused on attempts to influence government and legislative decisions – we are witnessing a new role of direct action directed at companies in the union agenda, especially carried out by collectives that so far had not achieved full recognition of their own interests in the usual instances of union representation. If this occurs it will inevitably entail the emergence of new union leaderships, closer to direct action and social legitimacy than to ceremonies of political agreements or to a newly minted leadership which considers political management as an instrument that consolidates direct action involving the companies".

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This dose of "radicalism" in the positions of the union movement, added to the confluence and formation of a new tactical toolkit, shapes a diversity of tactics and strategies within the union camp, which can be interpreted as a diversification of policy orientations and of the unions' capacity to represent, exceeding the institutional-legal possibilities of action and organization.

It is a contradictory phenomenon in which unionism has been fragmented, partly into a series of unions, federations and confederations, while, on the other hand, it has organized and established nuclei of "new" workers of precarious character with different social expectations, which results in a reconfiguration of the union map in Chile.

In this regard, what is interesting for our analysis is that all the trends that we have seen in the organizational field of trade unionism challenge the structural phenomenon of labor precarity, since, despite the theoretical notions that we have reviewed in Chapters 2 and 3, unionism and workers are nevertheless reinstalling conceptions of unity and solidarity in work spaces, as well as installing "labor precarity" as a core problematic which although fragmenting the class-which-lives-of-work (Antúnez 2003) still gives it a certain consistency and cohesion to operate together and simultaneously, to collectively identify as "precarious workers".

As mentioned earlier, the emergence of precarious identities represents a challenge for trade unions in terms of the need to strengthen, rebuild and extend a common identity of the working class (Moody 2001), and, moreover, to develop expressions of collective action involving non-union organizations. That is why in the final chapter we will review how the phenomenon of labor precarity is manifested in the discourses and practices of union leaders from various productive sectors, in order to develop an approach for unionism to tackle this new phenomenon.

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PART FOUR. METHODOLOGY AND ANALYSIS OF INTERVIEWS

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Introduction

This Thesis has been marked in its conception and choice of subject matter by two important aspects; the first being my familiarity with Chilean history and society, as I come from Chile, and, secondly, my experience of participating in organizations, forming unions, making learning experiences and collaborating in trade union work.

The experience gained in institutions and organizations in which I have worked while composing this thesis has allowed me to generate a consistent foundation and starting point to analyze the phenomena of job insecurity in Chile.

These experiences include my participation at the Labor Area of the Alejandro Lipschutz Institute of Science (Instituto de Ciencias Alejandro Lipschutz) and the Union School of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation (2012 and 2013); work with the Retail Workers Federation and my participation in the Union Coordination for the city of Temuco (2008 - 2010); contributions and participation in Union Schools organized by the Social Work Department of the Universidad de la Frontera (2008-2009); the Union Diploma of the Catholic University from Temuco in 2009; and my work as a professor in the Social and Union Leaders School Diploma for the Araucania Region organized by the Catholic University from Temuco and the Silva Henriquez University in 2010.

Due to my background as a sociologist, I was able to interpret these experiences with a knowledge on sociological and social theory which allowed me to recognize some recurring practices and discourses in the union area directly related to institutional limitations in the industrial relations and to also identify an erosion of bargaining power, credibility and performance capacity of the union organizations. The “Precarious Work” became a recurring theme among union leaders to understand and explain difficulties in expanding their influence among workers.

Facing this, I critically understood that there was an issue to be addressed, which was related to the frailty of worker organizations in the search for better working, salary and

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social security conditions and to the absence of systematic knowledge, related to job insecurity and union work.

This problem now required the creation of a research methodology that had the capacity to account for the phenomena that arose in the union area – job insecurity and the preparation of corresponding strategies – so as to generate new scientific knowledge about this matter.

As is well known, the methodology is, by definition, the road to take in order to attain safe and reliable knowledge and, if verified and proven to be successful, an adequate basis of scientific knowledge generation. The choice of a given methodology implies accepting a concept of "knowledge" and "science" that is part of a epistemological option (Buroway, 2003; 2005; Adorno, 2006).

The methodology that we have used to account for the phenomenon of labor precarity and its relationship with union strategy is organized in two parts. First, in the analysis of secondary data and literature about the process of work precarization, with the operationalization of the dimensions identified in chapter II and III, and developed further in chapter IV and V as mapping of the labor market's transformation scenario; secondly, in an examination of the trends in Chilean unions, which were described in the second part of chapter VI, and reviewed in the light of historical events of the last 30 years in chapter VII.

Upon looking at the results that this analysis provided, as an objective-relational component, the need for a comparison with qualitative and first-hand information emerged, as the analyzed statistical information and its contrast with the aforementioned ongoing socio-political processes (Chap. IV) created a global and structural dimension of the precarization process, yet at the same time did not identify the strategies and tactics (reactive, defensive and offensive) selected by the unions for the expansion phenomenon of labor precarity.

Because of this, it was necessary, in a second phase of research, to concentrate on the qualitative dimension of the phenomenon, in order to:

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(a) Demonstrate the reproduction and internalization of the phenomena identified in the secondary sources and data analysis like labor precarity; and

(b) Generate knowledge about the production of union strategies and experiences in relation to the subject of labor precarity.

In this way, we had to refocus on returning to the union training experiences and activate a contact network (institutional, personal, etc.) which has been built up during the last 7 years in different cities in Chile with different union leaders. The leaders represented an in situ point of view of the precarization process, including a direct link to the workplaces and their transformations as well as close insight into the ways in which unionism had responded to these processes and the "expertise" they had developed collectively in "managing precarity" in the workplace.

Our methodological debate, which started with these two research phases, was resolved by focussing on the epistemological coherence with the research model we chose to tackle the matter of "labor precarity", addressing four issues: 1) the relationship between theory and research; 2) the relationship between objectivity and subjectivity (Wallerstein 2006; Bourdieu 2008); 3) the "social facts" as "meaningful things" (Rubio & Varas 1999: 63); and 4) the object of research as something dynamic, unstable and complex.

These four points are reviewed within our epistemological framework, revealing the methodological pluralism of our research and the dialectic, critical and systemic proposal which involves an empirical analysis of the phenomenon of "labor precarity" in relation to the practices of union actors.

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Chapter Eight. Research Design and Method

Chapter Overview

The qualitative method has a holistic conception, which we have mentioned as part of the epistemological assumptions of this investigation in the concept of "totality", but at the same time it focuses on the "uniqueness" and "singularity" of their observations, avoiding falling into generalizations that exceed the characteristics of the specific field of research (De la Garza, 2012: 229 – 255).

On the other hand, the research method, as the temporal definition specific for its development, limit the characteristics comparable to other cultural, social, economic, etc. contexts (Stake, 1998) where the dimensions and categories analyzed in the context of the research are diluted. In this sense, the qualitative method is careful to trespass the unitary and concrete case it analyzes with excessive generalizations, focusing on the subjects and the real practices to allow the investigation to flow.

To carry out our research, we used a critical and interpretative approach. Although the construction of the studied categories came from a theoretical debate (Chapter II and III), to some extent they had already been part of our analysis of empirical researches and studies that proved relevant for the case study of the relation between precarious work and unions in Chile. The results obtained through investigations about this relation were interchangeable, homogeneous and synchronic with our qualitative research work.

The nature that we give to our research is intertwined in this aspect with the precision of focusing practices and strategies from diverse contexts, acknowledging the singularity and diversity of the interviewees, through the quantitative identification of the structural nature of labor precarity as a social phenomenon.

It is from here that, when facing the questions presented at the beginning (Chapter I), we decided to discuss and contrast quantitative data from one another's researches with

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qualitative methods in our investigation. This can be done without losing the quality of critical investigation known as "a historical contextualization of the situation studied" (Valles 1999: 57).

Even so, upon recognizing the singularity of the qualitative method, the role that the researcher assumes is then key to relating to the subjects during the research to the qualitative components of the interviews that up to here we considered the "expertise" and "the experience", as levels of integration, identity and sense for collective practices, attempting to visualize and "erode ignorance" (Valles 1999: 58-59) which mobilize union activity in relation to precarity.

In this way, our research focused on generating a constant treatment and communication and also a dialogue culture which we maintained throughout the investigation – and even up until now – using IT tools, virtual platforms and internet software (mainly Skype, Facebook and e-mails), adding to 5 trips to Chile (between 2010 and 2014) to support our research work and to carry out interviews which were able to build on working relationships related to the issue of labor precarity that we kept alive through time.

The objective of our research focuses on responding to the gaps in knowledge referring to the problem studied, but also to the "generation of stimuli for action, that is, for the transformation of the existing structure" (Guba & Lincon 1994: 114), starting from the exchange and communication experiences with the unions in Chile, and the interjection of the structural generality of the precarious work phenomenon. This objective has only been possible, up until now, through the continuous exchange of information, talks, conferences and organizational activities where we started working before the beginning of this investigation (Heron & Reason 1997).

8.1.- Problem of the Investigation

In Chile, the trend of labor precarity in the last three decades constitutes a problem for social integration and cohesion dynamics, in the form of an impoverishment of living

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conditions, because of the fragility and insufficiency of work relations and due to a weakening of the workers organizations in providing answers to these changes in the work sphere (Soto 2008; Hoehn 2009).

Labor precarity has been imposed on the labor market, contrary to what many studies propose, not as a deterministic and mechanical condition of market action, but rather as a combination of actions and relations between the state apparatus (mainly in the 17 years of military dictatorship), the neo-liberal reforms, the lack of regulation on the work sphere and the prohibition held upon unions, accompanied by the weakness of the latter in terms of collectively resisting and organizing counter-strikes to said changes.

This phenomenon is not Chilean per se, since in Latin America many of these processes of job insecurity have been marked by neo-liberal reforms, albeit in several combinations of political regimes, labor policies and union actions (Drake 1996; Zapata 2003; Murillo 2005; Aravena & Nuñez 2011).

At the beginning of the 1990's, there was talk of an uncertain future for Latin American unionism (Wachendorfer 1990: 80), as the union movement, despite its diversity, tradition and history, was faced with a common "problematic situation", comprised by

"the high unemployment and/or sub-employment rates which condition union activity, the restructuring and recomposition of workforce, and the deep changes in the labor organization that, promoted by new technologies, everyday, make old practices and methods obsolete, thus requiring new strategies and union proposals".

This problem was not solved during the 1990's and rather transformed the image of unions: "from a vision of strong and vigorous unions, whether during confrontation and conflict with the state or in their institutionalized bargaining and social consensus form", to that of a "weak and almost extinct unionism" (Gongora, Rodriguez & Leyba 2005: 162).

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This situation triggered a debate about the "crisis of unionism in Latin America" (Zapata 2003). The so-called "unionism crisis" (Zapata 1990; 2003) had a strong resonance in the sociology of labor in Latin American, and especially in the sociology of unions and workers organizations. This crisis extended in in different ways to each country on the continent, each being mainly characterized by low union affiliation rates, the trend towards union inactivity, the scarce growth of collective bargaining rates, the fragmentation of the working world and the individualization of work-based relationships (Batch 1990), ranging from the changes in the world of work and the new global links to the trends towards labor flexibilization (De la Garza 2001; 2011).

On the other hand, studies about unions, faced with neo-liberal hegemony in Latin America as they are, presented a reduction in union membership "when facing the appearance of new social movements which fought with the unions for the hegemony in the constitution of society", while on the other hand,

"the business and government conceptions broadened, supported by union studies which stated that unions were an obstacle for productivity, quality and competitiveness, as they defend particular corporatist interests which overload the state with anti-progress demands and impede the perfect operation of the market" (Gongora, Rodriguez & Leyba 2005: 163).

In spite of this scenario, union studies have kept up to date with the demands exposed by the new social realities. In a certain way, they have aimed to

"fine tune the core of their theoretical discussion to build union interpretation and action perspectives to face discourses that promote the extinction of unionism and the studies about it, and that are similar to those thesis about the end of work society" (Gongora, Rodriguez & Leyba 2005: 163-164).

Within this line of research, we inserted the problem of "union hotspots", not only as part of the theoretical problem, but as a problematization of the present situation of labor and

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social precarity in Chile. As we have previously established (Chapter IV), precarity represents a structural phenomenon in the forms of work in Chile, which impacts on organizing unions and the trends of their action.

Our investigation analyzes this problem in order to generate practical perspectives and strategies for its reversal in the work sphere, starting from the union experience of the union actors themselves.

8.2.- Questions of the Investigation

The problem evidenced, apart from the weaknesses of unionism to successfully respond to this labor precarity matrix (Julián 2014), the institutional difficulties with which it has operated in the last three decades. The deep divisions and internal complexity within unionism and the reduced attractiveness of collective bargaining and the pressure tools it relies on make the survival, strategy development and adaptation experiences of unionism the problematic focus of our research, that is to say, we seek to understand its current reality as well as its perspectives for endurance and strengthening.

Starting from this problematic approach, we integrate: (a) the job insecurity as a present dimension in the work sphere, (b) the disciplinary institutionalization of union activity, (c) bureaucratization, fractioning and new unionism; and (d) the weakening and decentralization of the unions' action and intervention tools in industrial relations.

In this regard we consider unionism as subject of work precarity (Chapter II). The status of subject supposes the development of strategies, action repertoires and discourses in the redefinition of its problematic and useless main action concepts.

8.2.1.- The Relevance of Precarity for Unionism (Q1)

Upon assuming that the process of labor precarity has extended to the core occupational structure, and that it has blown apart the salary nucleus of the labor market, we take the

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position that this nucleus, the most prone to union affiliation, has had to acquire new forms of adaptation, resistance and organization.

Our specific question in this context is: how has the process of labor precarity modified, altered or reorganized union activity? We attempt to elucidate this aspect on the basis of diagnoses and evaluations developed by union leaders about the current working conditions in their workplaces, and the relation between the situation of labor precarity and the strategies development by union organizations.

8.2.2 Strategies and Layers of Analysis (Q2)

Corresponding to the previous question about changes in union activity, we must specify our interest in the development of union strategies.

In our study, we define union action strategies as the ways of action demanded, assumed and developed by unionism to position and strengthen the defense of their interests in different areas, be it political, legal, cultural, social or regional.

According to this, we make this analysis operational at four levels, with respect to:

1) The surroundings or environment where unionism develops. This implies a relationship with the economic, political and social factors and the actions of the employers.

2) The status of the unions: their political position within the national scenario, the current situation with respect to union affiliation, the financing models, their relations with other union organizations, the development of campaigns (mainly solidarity and affiliation) and their collective bargaining power.

3) Levels of action: unionism and unions create intervention strategies according to territorial levels, i.e. national, sectoral or local, as well as inter-union coordination processes in the same territorial and spatial action dimension.

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4) Relations with other social actors: among these we consider the unions' relation with the government, employer's organizations, and their own members, employees not affiliated to the union, and the community and civil society.

Thus, our question focuses on the matter of whether there are union strategies which correspond to a labor precarity context, without assuming that these are coherent to each other, unified in a single line of action and/or that they have a tacit political character in their orientation.

The heterogeneity of possibilities is what invites us to reflect upon the hotspots that trouble us and give us the possibility that, under homogenized working conditions due to job insecurity, the action repertoires become diversified and thereby keep the union actor alive in the field of industrial relations.

8.2.3.- Problematic Cores for Unionism (Q3)

As we have seen previously, it is possible to establish, as general symptoms of Chilean unionism, its weakness in terms of affiliation and activity, its fragmentation right from the production structure and the labor market, the lack of protection accompanying labor under-regulation, the resulting weakening of collective action and bargaining and its lack of interdependence and synchronization with the social actors/processes of social protest and mobilization.

Our question on this matter and in terms of an analysis of union strategies is: is there a process of synchronization of insecurity trends and transformation of the work world with new problematic cores for unionism? In our opinion, the work insecurity process which enters the world of the workers in a combined uneven way, generates new expressions of a subjectivity specific to the work areas162, which results in a preservation of the unionism

162 We know that there is no complete lack of knowledge on the part of the actors in the world of work about the implications of these transformations in the collective imagination which the working class is today (Antunez 2003; Mora 2007; Weller, 2011; Sisto, 2012; Soto & Gatete, 2013). In its complexity and heterogeneity, this knowledge represents a different kind of appropriation that has allowed for generating,

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practices, their organizations, directives and limitations in terms of the construction of legitimacy, transparency and credibility.

This situation has led to the constitution of a series of problematic cores that are under stress during the articulation process of: 1) a series of subjective expectations concerning union affiliation of the workers; 2) an existing union structure governed by production frameworks and orders prescribed by the market, and 3) the neo-corporative organizational logic and model, in its neoliberal expression, which has dominated unionism for two decades (Zapata, 2003; Guzman 2004; Aravena, 2007; Aravena & Nuñez, 2011; Julian 2012a).

As we will see later, the constitution and strengthening of, and the perspectives for unionism in Chile are faced with hotspots that move, are activated and become obstacles for union actions, which are identified by our key informants in this investigation.

8.3.- Instruments to gather information

Our primary qualitative information collection technique focused on carrying out 22 in- depth interviews with union leaders in Chile. The interviews took place between 2010 and 2013, obtaining diverse results depending on the depth of the information obtained, and due to the diversity of the union leaders interviewed.

As clarification, we can say that an in-depth interview is characterized by

"taking place between an interviewer and an informant with the purpose of obtaining information about life, in general, or about a topic, process or concrete experience of a person. Through the in-depth interview, the interviewer seeks to find out that which is important or significant for the interviewee, trying to

from the perspective of management, new ways of disciplining and controlling work, and, for workers, a complex network of methods of resistance and protest.

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understand how they see, classify and interpret their world in general or some area or topic that is of interest for the research, in particular" (Cuba & Lincon 1994).

The interview is based on a script (Patton 1990: 228), characterized by the preparation of a script of the topics to be addressed (and by the freedom of the researcher to organize and formulate the questions throughout the interview). This allows the interviewer to "obtain meaningful information (intensive, holistic or contextualized), in the words and approach of the interviewees", and a "more direct, personalized, flexible and spontaneous interaction framework than that of a structured interview or a survey" (Valles 1999: 196), which connects to the participative work approach and to the democratic/horizontal dialog that we designed in our research proposal.

We faced the challenge of actually going out to the field of study and interacting with the subject of the interview, a necessary step to efficiently reconstruct the interviewees' mindsets and maintain a fluent and participative dialogue which would help in identifying the significant elements of the formulation of union strategies in relation to the importance attributed to these practices by the subjects with regard to the context and the scenarios of labor precarity (De la Garza, 2011; Soto, 2013).

The necessary intimacy for the reconstruction of the studied phenomenon (Selltiz; Wrightsman; Cook. 1980: 151-153) involved a challenge for the investigation because was necessary interacting through visits and trips to Chile on a regular basis. This was accompanied by constant opinion and information exchanges with the interviewees, which guaranteed a permanent trusting relationship and which allowed, on few occasions, for the introduction of the investigation into the action research field.

The choice of in-depth focused interviews was prioritized; that is to say, focused on "clarifying given aspects of a situation or stimulus in terms of the subjective experiences or responses of a group of people within the limits of a homogeneous treatment" (Flacso, 1975: 796-797), which, in a certain way, we must acknowledge, outgrew the limited scope we prescribed for the interview; on many occasions the concept of "precarious work" was

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elaborated beyond the union domain, seeping into the family, mood, medical, psychological and religious worlds of the interviewees.

In many cases, the interviewees, upon recognizing the transgression of precarity to the space of the interview itself, asked us to use anonymity as a way of guaranteeing safety and protection of the worker's and union leader's privacy, according to our previous findings in the disciplinary institutional framework in work relations (Julian 2012b). In sum, the anonymity gave us the possibility to not lose any of the key information for our research.

The script generation process for the interview implied the need for formulating "general questions" to start the conversation, the purpose of which was to clarify the intent of our investigation and tacitly reproduce the dimensions we would seek to integrate in the debate on insecurity in a country like Chile (see point 7.4.1).

The generation of the interview script involved a permanent adjustment of the statistical data collection process, systematized in the previous chapters, in order to create a structural map that would serve as comparative template and as a scenario for the dimensions where the labor precarity used and violated the work space to constitute a subjection and subjectification condition in several production, social and geographic scenarios.

8.4.- The Selection of Interviewees

The selection of analysis units in the investigation was composed by different characteristics that combined generational, geographical, production (production areas) and gender elements.

Rodriguez, Gil and García (1998: 135) quote that "when facing probabilistic sampling, qualitative research proposes a selection strategy of informants which assumes a deliberate and intentional selection" which does not assume that people are "randomly selected to complete an n size sample", but, on the contrary, the "established criteria or attributes are

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adjusted by the researcher", making the research a process full of complexity and heterogeneity.

In our case, the informant selection criteria were based on: 1. Their status of experts, upon facing a duality of labour precarity: the choice of union leaders as informing subjects is related to the dual positioning they play in the area, i.e. being in precarious working conditions, but still having a minimum institutionalized protection status (as a PPAA sanction). This duality is constituent of the organization, representation and action form that the union in question would assume;

2. Their condition of representatives of union action: In this matter, the union leader has a privileged knowledge about how precarity integrates, or not, the practices and strategies developed by the union to obtain benefits and to defend their interests. Also, it involves a direct knowledge of the trends and affiliation, disaffiliation and apathy reasons behind the union, as a mobilizer of labor demands within this labor precarity context. At the same time, the union leaders count with the interest representation of the union’s members, like an attribute, a condition of power and democracy, and on the other hand, they are the responsible for managers and establish the communication dynamics between the enterprise and the unions.

3. The position within the union as access point: although the union leader formally represents the workers, this representation is not free from discrepancies, conflicts or tension. The role the union leader plays in the conflict and consensus of interests, and his or her knowledge of said situations, makes it possible to recognize the role of labor precarity as a catalyst and/or decelerator in this negotiation of roles and actions.

According to these criteria we present a "multiple polyphony of voices" (Bajtin 1982; Barthes 1974; Ibañez, 1985; 2002) concerning the ways of individually internalizing the

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phenomenon of labor precarity and its implications for the ways of union association, organization and action in today's Chile.

For this polyphony we considered different criteria that indicate different "subject positions" (Bourdieu 2004) and perspectives in the organization level of unions. We selected interviewees according to criteria referring to geography, age, gender and the economic sector of their union affiliation.

1. In geographic terms, we conducted interviews in different cities of the country: 8 leaders in Santiago (ST); 3 leaders in Antofagasta (AT); 3 leaders in Concepcion (CP); 5 leaders in Temuco (TM) and; 3 leaders in the city of Osorno (OS).

2. In relation to the age spectrum, different groups were included: 4 leaders between 25 and 35-years-old (E1); 8 leaders between 35 and 45 (E2); 8 leaders between 45 and 55 (E3); and 4 leaders between 55 and 65 (E4).With respect to the production element, we tried to show the productive heterogeneity: 3 leaders from the public health sector (SSP); 2 from the private health system (SPR); 4 from the retail sector (RE); 2 from the security sector (SE); 2 from the mining industry (MI); 3 in public services (SP); 3 in the financial system (SF); and 3 in the manufacturing area (SI).

3. As for gender, we choose to accept an inclination towards men, given the structural representation of the phenomenon obtained from the Labor survey of 2008, where it can be learned that only 19.9% of union leaders in the country are women. Thus, most of the interviewees (16) were men (H), while woman made up 6 of our interviewees (M).

The sampling, aside from this characterization by quotas (Rubio & Varas 1999: 473), that is to say, involving representative groups for the development of the interviews, also sampling refers to the meaningfulness of the information that they could contribute; through the

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particular experiences of each one of the interviewees selected for the research (Appendix 2).

Beyond their correspondence with the criteria mentioned in the quota sampling, the sampling guide, linked to the four dimensions of precarity, functioning as determinant in the selection of the participants, added to a process backed by "key informants" in each city we visited, with whom we had close communication relations that had been forged at previous union meetings for training and dialogue.

The key informants provided an initial introduction into the field of study in terms of making available and supplying infrastructure and contacts for the development of the research; on a second occasion, they issued a long-term account of the research scenario, i.e. with respect to union action, and complemented my knowledge as a researcher; and finally, on a third occasion, they played a key role as coordinators of activities for returning the results of the investigation to the rest of the interviewees and unions, organizations, etc., interested in this work163.

The characteristics of the participants are mainly related to their nature of experts who have lived through precarious work conditions, in different spaces of the work process, which creates a relationship between the subject and the object of knowledge in the research. Aside from the expertise that each of the interviewees has, resulting from their work biography and their contact with the labor security phenomena, the role of union leaders who are not fully exempted from work offers them a degree of "unstable protection", protection as provided by the legislation, but unstable protection due to the anti-union practices which we have revised in Chapter IV.

163 Because of the geographical limitations, up to this date we have held video-conferences with the interviewed union organizations in order to develop a gradual return of results. A greater emphasis has been placed on the exchange and dialogue with the workers in the city of Temuco, where there is a permanent flow of information concerning union strategies and groups of precarious workers.

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As a result of the Chilean union organization system being marked by the decentralization of collective bargaining models at a company level, the union leaders assume this dual nature in their experience: a) They are in direct contact with the working conditions and are close to their affiliates, which has a positive effect on the creation of collective projects, representation dynamics, accountability practices and first-hand information management concerning precarious employment conditions; and

b) They have a different status of protection from dismissal due to "union privileges", but within an institutionalization framework with weak collective bargaining power, which makes it very difficult to exercise union power per se, and instead renders the phenomenon of labor precarity more visible to union organizations. c) They have knowledge about the working conditions and the reality of workers than are not necessary in the unions, but are related to the same workplace. The leaders of unions enjoy: 1. A position of “protecion” and surveillance in relation to precarity, and, 2. A contact with workers in conditions of precarity more radicals than the conditions that they have.

In our view, this condition justifies our focus on conducting interviews as well as the specific selection of the union leaders in our research. They give us more information about the relation between precarity and trade unions, and the trade unions´ perspective on precarity.

8.5.- Analysis of the Interviews

For the analysis of the interviews, we applied the method used by Pierre Bourdieu (Bourdieu et al 1999) upon analyzing "the spaces of points of view", where he states that it "is not enough to explain each point of view separately", but, on the contrary:

“All of them must be brought together as they are in reality, not to relativise them in an infinite number of cross-cutting images, but, quite to the contrary, through simple juxtaposition, to bring out everything that results when different or antagonistic

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visions of the world confront each other – that is, in certain cases, the tragic consequences of making incompatible points of view confront each other, where no concession or compromise is possible because each one of them is equally founded in social reason” (Bourdieu 1999: 3).

For this difficulty in the generation of categories, which assumes a “complex and multilayered representation capable of articulating the same realities but in terms that are different and, sometimes, irreconcilable” (Bourdieu 1999: 3), we have used Bourdieu's perspective which conceives the co-existence of multiple realities in the social space, among them the sphere of work, in order to have a broader understanding of the phenomenon of labor precarity and the strategies of our interviewees.

The juxtaposition is set as the basis for defining the perspectives among our interviewees with respect to the relations that articulate the phenomenon of precarity and the response dynamics to these phenomena as well as the production of countless representations of themselves in these contexts (of labor precarity) and of the signs of identity through the differentiation in respect to "others".

Our definition of certain core concepts of union activity is what has been expressed in the present discourses, which has allowed us to distinguish the identification of categories (more than their a priori generation), considering the context we have presented in the previous chapters and the fluency of the points of view expressed in the interviews themselves.

This has allowed us to distinguish the heterogeneity and complexity of unionism in their voices and points of view since these, in their multiplicity, not only co-exist but, on some occasions, even compete for predominance with regard to the assessment of the phenomenon of precarity, understanding the insecure subject or defining "who the most insecure one is".

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Our analysis consisted on a discourse analysis which has integrated the construction of descriptive categories from the representations present in the interview script (Ibañez, 2002; Canales, 2006: 305). The script is constructed according to the results of our review of the statistical-structural elements of the precarious work phenomenon in Chile, which have been addressed by the interviewers as "problems" and limits for the makeup and strengthening of union organizations.

In contrast, for the identification of this problem network, we have categorized the "core concepts of the conflict" between Precarity and Union organization, which articulate the resolution of these "problems". We focus our analysis according to the presence in the discourses of the interviewees of our dimension of precarity (uncertainty, insecurity, insufficiency and precarious working conditions), specially contrasting his answers with the actions and strategies development by unions for facing the phenomenon of labor precariousness. 8.5.1.- Main Categories

Following from the aforementioned epistemological proposal, we acknowledge the difficulties in developing critical theory in its in-depth abstraction; the focus is placed on the dissection of categories and modern abstractions such as "the state", "social classes", etc. in order to facilitate discussions revolving around the formal hegemonic principles which regulate society.

We tries to use abstract categories referring to security, with the purpose of articulating the theoretical research proposal (with the focus on Insecurity in the Global South), and the systematized dialectic methodology in the information collection instrument (the structure and script of the in-depth interview).

In this research, the use of in-depth interviews, give us the possibility to dedicate a long space of time for get new information and an idea about the relation between precarity, biography, personals motivations and the union’s organization. In the same way give us an

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account the particularities from our interviewers linked to gender, sector and age, and the ways into exist a relation with the phenomena of precarity in the workplace.

The questions that were introduced to the interview involved a dual operationalization of the multi-dimensionality of labor precarity. On one side, we integrated the statistic operationalization we have detailed in chapter III as well as the insecurity dimensions that are proposed in the second chapter of this thesis, referring to Instability, Insecurity, Insufficiency and Working Conditions (See Part. III, p. 82).

We integrated a broader map of these four dimensions of labor precarity (insecurity, instability, insufficiency and characteristics of working conditions) as guidelines to be operationalized in an exploration of the mindsets and their repercussion and interaction in the development of union strategies, and the opening towards sense models of mindsets that would consider resistance and adaptation to the condition of precarious work.

The analysis process required codifying the content of the interviews into concepts that integrated this multi-dimensionality and epistemological complexity. These four dimensions, as we mentioned, were dealt with at a "problem" level. We asked for the relevance of the labor precarity phenomena for unions and unionism, in the moment of taking a decision, selecting a tactic or developing repertories to encourage their organizations (Chapter Ten).

The process focused on the information about the reality of our four dimensions in the national context, linking every dimension to the idea of understanding the organizations' problems provoked in the unions, considering the fragility and discipline model of labor relations in Chile.

As a first approach we can say that precarity is clearly a challenging situation for the definition of new coherence and collective patrons of identity and cooperation in the union movement. Precarity, comprising new political phenomena, is going to transform the

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practices and the consensus in the workplace. This transformation is going to be reflected in the union movement’s strategies.

Our results can be synthesized into six problematic levels for unionism, in relation to labor precarity and the changes in the world of work. The influences of precarity in the strengthening of union’s organizations, the internal and political difficulties for establishing a common project in the trade unions, and the loss of a social identity, make the prospect and the present for trade unions in Chile more complicated.

So, according to the theoretical debate on the definition of the currents of labor precarity (see 2.3.4), the legacy of the "socialist moment" (See section 4.4.4), and the results of our interviews analysis, we get the definition of six levels of problems for unions:

1. Productive heterogeneity: (PH): the internal complexity of unionism is related to the phenomena of outsourced production, the diversification of the employment and contract forms and the massive increase of (new) groups of workers in precarious working conditions, marked by deprivation and instability. To this we can add the presence of transnational capitals and global production chains (in the private sector). All these factors act as mobilizers of the discourses related to the lack of unit (of action) and of organizational confluence.

2. Segmentation (SGN): The SGN is related to the PH, the segmentation produces a hierarchy of the action and organization of the workers. It adopts the formulation of corporate logics, not only at a company level, but also at an occupational and contractual level, promoting the fragmentation of union organizations. It is also possible to consider here the phenomenon of externalization and the regulating nature that makes the action agreed on by the workers fragile because of several contractual conditions.Atomization (AT): the phenomenon of atomization refers to the identification of individualistic behavior of base workers that disregards the generation of collective bargaining logics and union activation, with the resulting negative reductionism of the union as a tool in the defense of the workers’ interests. This condition is also associated to the short duration of employment and its

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weakness as an eroding factor of the union’s affiliation logics and of the long-term planning of the organization. On the other hand, atomization focuses on insufficiency (of salary, mainly) and on the deprivation and the difficulties of the union to solve this problem for their affiliates.

3. Vertical organizational logics (VOL): the VOL constitute a problem in the internal logic of organization. The VOL operated as disincentive for the union organization and affiliation at two levels: (a) the bureaucratic relationships established at a central union level with the regional and local union organizations weaken the affiliation of unions to larger organizations and with inter-sectoral confluence; and (b) an operation that is pyramidal in nature and lacking of representation in the union activity at business and national level. This level of organization promotes the atomization and the discrediting of the union activity. While, on the other hand, the VOL are seen as rapid and efficient response possibilities when facing problems such as the AT and the SGN of the precarious work (See 5.4.2).

4. Disciplinary institutionalism (DI): this problem, analyzed in depth in chapter VI, shows a relation with, on one hand, the bureaucratic character that the union activity has taken on, through the creation of institutions that regulate and co-opt the labor conflict with no effective results for the workers (see section 6.4.1); and on the other hand, with the regulating conditions present in the legislation pertaining to the covert persecution of union activity (Julian, 2012b). Both dimensions of disciplinary nature are reinforced by the nature of non-sustaining the employment, and the "risk" (of being dismissed) that being a union member implies.

5. The predominance of a defensive and reactive logic (DRL): when addressing the general labor precarity context, the dominant response in unionism has been an DRL, which weakens the possibilities of extending the field of union action (beyond the workspace), and of generating proposals oriented towards strengthening their activity so as to move away from a position of political subordination (Chapter VII), from the neo-corporate logic breaking down by the end of the "socialist moment" (See section 7.4) and of the disciplinary coercion which decentralizes the union action at a company level (See section 6.3.1).

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These “Problematic levels” were grouped in categories (axial coding), setting propositions, using for this the coding paradigms established by Strauss (Strauss 1987; Strauss & Corbin 1998), and using as support the analysis carried out in the previous chapters as the first unit of analysis. Then, we crossed the precarity's dimensions and the answers of our interviewers, getting as results a list of practices and strategies undertaken by trade unions, and a very extensive evaluation about the precarity’s phenomena in the union activity.

These processes combine a dialogue between different dimensions of precarity, where it is possible to integrate more complexity to the effects of precarity in the definition and identification of problems and repertories for unionism. The “dialogue into dimension” gives us the possibility to understand how the unions think in their proposals and possibilities of action in a very asymmetric context, and arrive at an analysis that integrates the multi-dimensional force of precarity in the workplace and everyday life.

To determine the reliability of the results, we used several available elements - interviewers independent of the analysts, and two independent analysts who coded all the material separately – obtaining a convergence of 75% of the codes.

According to the identification of these "problematic levels" we were able to assert in the analysis of the interviews the existence of a network of sub-categories which are associated to discourses and positions of subjects who tried to develop strategies of resolution and overcoming for these problems within the union sphere.

In this way, combining the dialogue inter-dimensions and the answers from our interviewed, we generated "conflictive core concepts" that, operating in a juxtaposed and contradictory way in the discourses of the union leaders, especially in relation to the identification of the "problematic levels". These facts reveal diverse strategies of orientation and understanding among the interviewees when faced with the phenomenon of "labor precarity" and its occurrence in the union action. The result of this coding can be summarized in Table Nº7 (next page).

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For clarification, we have added, in the first column, the dimensions of labor precarity that operate, in a greatly determining way, in the configuration of a problem in the union’s activity. The combination of this dimensions in the discourse of our interviews, produce the identification of new categories. In the second column, we find the "problems" identified through the categories present in the interviews (according to the difficulties, obstacles and the deficiencies of unionism when dealing with labor precarity). And finally, in the third column, we represent the potential solutions for the previously identified problems which, as can be seen, are not necessarily coherent with or homogeneous to each other in the various discourses of the union leaders but, on the contrary, show a range of repertoires when facing similar problems.

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Table No. 7. Operationalization of dimensions, categories and sub-categories of the analysis of the interviews conducted with union leaders Dimension Category Sub-Category Precarious Work Problem Core concept - conflict

Instability Organization of the unorganized ones Heterogeneity: outsourcing, stable/unstable, Unit Working Conditions Generation of cooperation networks

Vulnerability Insufficiency

Segmentation and fragmentation Neo-corporativism Working Conditions

Classist positions

Instability Affiliation campaigns

Insufficiency Atomization, Individualism and reductionism. Legitimacy of union activity

Insecurity Achievements of their action

Insecurity Democratization and opening

Vertical Organizational Logic. Working Conditions Organizational flexibility Problematized with heterogeneity

Instability Horizontal integration

Instability Reorientation

Institutionalization Insecurity Coupling to new social movements disciplining and bureaucratization

Insufficiency Knowledge of the legislation

Instability Labor interruptions and conflicts Insecurity Predominance of a defensive logic Defensive logic Instability Offensive logic Working Conditions

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8.5.2.- Analysis of Sub-Categories

As we have stated before, the sub-categories identified in our analysis consist of forms of union action repertoire with respect to the problems present in the strengthening and revitalization of unionism, the setup of unions and their institutional constrictions, and in their relation to the dimensions of labor precarity.

When we refer to repertories we follow the definition of Frege & Kelly (2003; 2004) with regard to the diversification of actions that unionism would have developed to respond to problems like the “loss of membership, either in aggregate or among particular segments of the labor market, such as young workers; problems of interest definition and aggregation; the erosion of structures of interest representation, such as workplace unionism or work councils; declining capacity of mobilization, based on members’ reluctance to participate in union activities; institutional change, such as reduction in bargaining coverage or weakening of links to political parties; and, lastly, diminished power resources, for example, because of high unemployment (Frege & Kelly 2003: 8 – 9).

For Frege and Kelly (2003: 9) there are six types of union strategies that make up the so- called Union revitalization, which is defined as a variety of attempts to tackle and potentially reverse these problems. Here, different strategies can be distinguished, such as:

a) Organizing: focuses on the acquisition of membership and the affiliation of workers to unions which also "can create and strengthen representation in the workplace… and increase the capacity of mobilization and its power in the labor market" (Frege & Kelly 2003:9);

b) Organization restructuring: this includes the tactics that aim at mergers and internal reorganization, which can potentially have a positive impact on three areas, a) economic strengthening and a rationalization of the resources; b) increasing the power in the labor market and the political power of the union; c) increasing the affiliation in terms of strengthening unions.

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c) Construction of coalitions: this refers to other social movements, like "anti- globalization or environmental movements", which may help unions in obtaining greater resources, access to social networks and to key individuals (Moody 2001) with the idea of becoming stronger together, especially in terms of the organization of campaigns, broadening the claims to representation of the unions;

d) Association with employers: the nature of these associations can be at a national, industrial level and/or in the workplace itself, with the intention of protecting and developing collective bargaining institutions, "and to allow them to pursue new types of interests" (Frege & Kelly 2003:9);

e) Political action: this strategy is focused on the access to resources (power resources) with the objective of obtaining better results, more favorable legislation and/or a "corporatist regulation of the work market" (Frege & Kelly 2003:9); and

f) International connections: this aims at improving the "exchange of information about multinational corporations, increasing the negotiation power of the unions and facilitating the mobilization of members in the campaigns" (Frege & Kelly 2003: 9) in recognition of a global work scenario (Turner 2004; Padrón 2011).

In our analysis, these strategies constitute "conflictive thematic cruxes", as on analyzing the interviews we found that the union leaders identify an action level in terms of the complexity of the actors whom they face in labor relations, and with its opening up to integrate new players, like non-union actors, for the strengthening and effectiveness of unionism.

Following the definition of the lines of action, we considered the trade unions’ discourses, present in the sub-categories, with respect to:

1. Governmental actors: this involves a political and critical view of labor institutionalism, the conditions of insecurity and the lack of social well-being. These institutions are related to the cohesion of business interests and those of the political class. This view on many occasions shows ambivalence, as it tends to highlight

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"political characters" as figures of "trust" for the union, and in other cases to reject the harmfulness of the political parties as valid actors in defending the interests of workers.

2. The business players: there is a transverse view in which business people represent the enemy as well as an obstacle for union action. The business actors are perceived to have a negative attitude towards processes of collective bargaining and/or on having a mediator such as the union in labor relations. On the other hand, the exercise of precarious work and a systematic violation of labor rights is assumed like part of a business’s culture.

3. Management actors: these are seen as the complement to the business people's activities, and on certain occasions as reproducers of a despotic logic at the workplace. In addition, they constitute a recurring reference for union leaders during collective bargaining processes and also represent the external consultancy of the company in terms of labor legislation and productive re-engineering matters.

4. The "other" unions: In most of the interviews, "the other unions" are subject to a critique of union bureaucracy and the lack of collectivism in union leadership (especially in structures at a national level). Likewise, they are referents of identity, as they allow for establishing one's own positions in a negative relation to these "others". Even so, there are cases of symbiotic co-existence and adaptability to these "others" in the discourse of the union leaders.

5. The non-union workers: these workers have the right to affiliation and do not participate in the union from a referential point for union leaders to push affiliation practices, even though many times they are seen as enemies of the union's constitutive process and of activity planning.

6. The most precarious workers: this group represents an important challenge among the problems for unions, the workers without right to unions being seen as the most precarious, with fragile links of discontinuous solidarity, and with more relationships with the union (when these are in the same workplace).

7. "Civil society": in this regard, references made by interviewees are related to a communication and public strategy of union action, looking towards coordination

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with actors outside the union space itself and the strengthening of legitimacy and appreciation in the public eye.

These subjects in the treatment of sub-categories, as part of the structuring of union repertoires, involve a conception of the "thematic cruxes" when placed, in a juxtaposed manner, in relation to the power relations present in Chilean society and to these power relations’ management at the workplace.

It is at this level that we can interpret the "conflictive thematic cruxes" as part of an inter- subjective interrelation in the union arena, and as an experience of the fluidity of labor precarity in the positioning and willingness of the subjects to overcome the obstacles for collective organization.

8.5.3.- Analysis of the Interviews

We focused on a discourse analysis oriented towards relating the conditions of insecurity concerning work and the heterogeneity of the work concept to the practices and meanings of collective union actions today, in order to rebuild a map of social representations with view to the labor market already compiled through quantitative techniques of data analysis, allowing contrasting, illustrating and going into depth into the information already obtained beforehand. This is meant to generate a characterization of unionism's perspectives in terms of being able to generate decent and respectful work in the sense of a reinvention and innovation of such strategies, as well as a contrast to the theory of labor precarity in the Chilean case.

8.5.4.- Transcription of the Interviews

The interviews were recorded with a Panasonic RR-XS400 digital recorder, and were fully transcribed using a transcription guideline (see appendix). This helped to achieve the aim of taking into consideration and integrating a series of particular aspects that could not simply be transcribed from the audio. The consideration of the silences, reiterations, stuttering, etc., gave us a deeper framework of the experiences and discourses of the interviewees.

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8.5.5 Analysis Software

For our analysis of the interviews we used the ATLAS-Ti 7.0 software. This software allows for composing work networks and identifying codes and for the linking of sub- categories in the discourses of the interviewees, which has given us the possibility of ordering and structuring the juxtaposed presentation of the same related codes.

8.6.- Analyzing Voices and Problems

When focusing on the union perspectives and strategies, we see the contingency of the structural process of transformation of the subjecttification conditions of the workers in the union plane, showing their mutation, adaptation and transformation up to today, providing a vision of the "present", cross-cut by the dynamic of the "past" and in the presence of a future scenario of precarity and the reintroduction of the union player into the political- public sphere.

Only through the review of the perspectives of the subjects can we build the macro-social and political relationship where the impacts of labor precarity are developed, as a source of subjective constitution of the workers. This is the case because, if we try to identify the different types of social practices (economic, political, cultural, etc.) represented in a particular moment, which gain expression in the discourse of the subjects, we find a contingent and differentiated map of subjectifications and objectifications of the social precarization process. On the other hand, the heterogeneous morphology of unionism, which is extremely complex and historically differentiated, directly implies the need for a dynamic point of view on the matter, considering the unstable situation and the notorious mutation of the positions and conditions that make up the hotspots of labor precarity.

The dynamic elements of this problem have a deep-lying historical nature (Skocpol 1984; Burawoy 1989; Creswell 2007). As we have previously seen in Chapter II, labor precarity has a temporal dimension which, in peripheral contexts, shows a clear geographical

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differentiation when understanding its origins, the emergence and production of meanings associated to its manifestation(s), and the field of its subjectification by the union movement.

At the same time, the evolution of institutional and regulating organizations for work relations makes up a production and coercion focus that is diverse and ever-changing, in relation to union practices and their relationships with political regimens that are constantly restructuring and with difficulties in attaining legitimacy, with the transversality of neoliberal policies as a background setting in the generation of labor policies.

The motivation to focus on the social practices and discourse is based on the fact that it allows combining the structure perspective and the action perspective. We understand a practice as, on the one hand, a relatively permanent form of acting in the social area (a form defined by its position inside a structured practice network), and on the other, a dominance of action and social interaction that aside from reproducing the structures, has the potential of transforming them.

All practices are production practices; these constitute the scenario where social life takes place, whether economic, political or routine in nature (Wodak & Meyer 2003: 55). Within the framework of our object of study, we analyze the duality of unionism in reference to the practices and meanings present in their capacity to structure the same field of labor precarity (and social precarity) from the institutional and disciplinary role that their coercive institutionalization takes up in the subjects.

So, those subjects’s voices are living changes. For our analysis, this fact represents the strategic point of caption, because it give us a perspective related to the problems between work, as a social activity, and labor precarity, as an historical transition in the constitution of subjectivity. It is thus a dialectical approach (Berniker & McNabb 2006).

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Chapter Nine: Analysis, Results and Report

Chapter Overview

Below, we present the report of the final results from the in-depth analysis of the interviews conducted with 22 union leaders. The presentation begins by revising the dimensions of insecurity in the discourses of the interviewees so as to establish the problems for the action of union leaders and their unions.

Next, we analyze the "conflictive thematic cruxes" present in these problems as part of the aforementioned sub-categories (see section 8.4.2), especially in reference to the actors identified by the interviewees regarding the solution and generation of strategies used nowadays to mediate the problems of unionism.

We end with some partial conclusions in the sense of a synthesis of unionism, at a diagnostic level, starting from the tensions between the categories and the sub-categories, and between the diversity and contradictions of the discourses oriented towards labor precarity.

9.1.- Dimensions of Labor Precarity

Following from our research, we can establish the importance of the dimensions of job insecurity in the development (or not) of union activity. At the beginning, we considered the “dual nature” of the union leaders facing job insecurity (protection and lack of protection), and their close relation in the workplace to phenomena of precarious work to the extent that they become "experts" in the matter.

The questions we asked aimed, first of all, at determining the influence of these dimensions (Insecurity, Insufficiency, Instability and Work Conditions) as constructive elements of union discourse and in the design of union activity.

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The results revealed the relevance of the diverse aspects of precarious work in the identification of problems in the configuration, conformation, permanence and action of the union, both inside and outside the workplace

Below, we present the relevance of the dimensions of labor precarity in the conformation and identification of problems, in detail, from and for the union leaders interviewed, juxtaposing perception and possibilities for overcoming these following the thematic cruxes in conflict.

We recognize that the operationalization of these dimensions entails a diagnostic level that allows for differentiating the aspects of labor precarity operating in an abstract dimension, that is to say, rather than subject to a selectivity and hierarchization of the common practice of labor precarity like another concrete problem.

Even so, this hierarchization is based on the results of the interview which led to a question to the union leader concerning the relevance of these dimensions, in order to clarify the extent of their impact on union activity. Therefore, we implicitly cover the dimensions of insecurity in the questions asked as part of a taxonomy of the multi-dimensional concept of "labor precarity", which we wanted to develop as an explicative, pedagogical and methodological element in the presentation of the results.

9.2.- Work instability

Work instability, mainly as a lack of security in terms of the temporary nature of the job and the presence of high rotation in work positions, entails difficulties and problems for union activity, which has been identified by union leaders in the interviews conducted.

This dimension is introduced as an obstacle for union organizations in terms of planning, continuity and protection of members, as well as producing groups of workers which are adapted to these precarious work conditions and who have diverse motivations for union participation.

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The main problems related to work instability are production heterogeneity, atomization, VOLs, disciplinary institutionalization and DRLs.

9.2.1.- Instability and Productive Heterogeneity

In this dimension it was possible to identify the diversification of flexible employment conditions as one of the introductory guidelines for modernization and production reengineering models, which established and continue to establish a high instability for union work.

This process is part of the new morphology of work in Chile, with a diversified range of workers and occupations. The instability is a new possibility of the owner for controlling the workers’s organization and collective action.

On one occasion we see that the changes in ownership of the companies, including in the cases of privatization, alter the organization and stability conditions of the job:

"… I was there for about two years, and then they hired me, they hired me and I managed to last almost one year under contract, because CESMEC, was Chilean before, the company. It was CESMEC limitada, and a very famous transnational company, bouroberita (Bureau Veritas), whose head office is in France, bought CESMEC, bought several companies here in Chile (…) and within the major administrative reshuffling, all the new… um…: executives, managers made the decision to close the office in San Antonio, they settled contracts, left only the boss, who had been there for years, and moved to Santiago, and the rest of the colleagues and me were paid off, being left out of work". (SI_1:00:07;12-20).

"…Walmart took over in Chile, they brought a lot of methods… um… methodologies which are not bad, they are good but at the same time… um… we found that our labor laws are insecure, and they are insecure but, Walmart has not been able to go against them, (…) they have not been able to instill this strict rigor of…, of fear, of lowering salaries and everything tries to compensate something, up to now the change has been for the better" (SR_3.00:51:12-35).

"…I am from a self-managed hospital and from the future Maipú hospital, which the company San José took over, San José Tecno-control, which is also Spanish, here we have right now, let’s say, 500 officers that are working there right now, of the 100%, there, 75% are for services purchased, in order words, they are working free-lance, there is…here…

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um…, how can I say it, there is, the minority, are hired, I mean, of the 500 people here, 150 are under contract…" (SSP_2.00_06:22-33).

The issue of outsourcing means introducing a problem in the relations among the workers under different contract conditions, and with the difficulty of having short duration regimes, which, according to some union leaders, is overcome by a cooperation which transgresses the relationship between the main company and outsourced company.

The nature of this link would be one of support and guidance extended from the main company's union to that of the outsourced one.

"…of course we would like them to be able to be self-organized, we don't want to be, how should I say it, they want us to solve the problem, we don't want welfarism for the workers, let alone for outsourced workers, that they see us as the solution. What we want is that they become empowered of their issues, their issues" (SR_1.00:18:22-27).

".. we know of the problems of the outsourced workers because we make regular visits to stores, to supermarkets, and workers there say to use that X happened, Y happened, in companies where there is union organization, where there are union leaders" (SR_4.00:18:10-15).

Outsourcing complicates the capacity of unionizing workers as well as the setting up of relations between workers. Upon asking about the relations between workers of outsourcing companies and the union of the main company, we find diverse answers which indicate a lack of relations, the vulnerability of non-union workers, and even the lack of recognition between both groups.

"…no, none. With none of the companies. They are relatively small companies. There aren't many workers" (SPR_1.00:12:27-30).

"… Well, if it was an integral service company, of course, there would be more workers and they would form unions, they would be organized. That’s why they have tiny companies, and the people have no knowledge, they're not interested either. They live from day to day, they work for a salary and nothing else..:" (SR_4.00:24:15-21).

"… if we did that work of uniting and using the networks as we should use them, and the information (…) of what is happening with your workers or with your members, or even if they are not your member, with the outsourced workers, if we can't even do that, what else can we expect? We are formed nowadays (…) to support unity more than ever (SR_2:00:19:58-09).

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"… the hired workers felt superior to us, in fact, they didn't like sharing the food hall with us, they wanted, because they wanted, us to have different schedules and during the day it was justified obviously, because the food hall was not so big and you needed to pass by in sections, but always in the administration part, where those who earn more are, they were the first to go in, the second group were the hired workers, and the rest, and the outsourced workers were the last that went to lunch…" (SI._3:00:43:31-49).

This situation shows the difficult way to Organizing in the outsourcing context. The division between the workers make very complicated the possibilities and the spaces for generate a collective organization in the workplace. Added that the instability operated like a disciplinary sensor for workers, waiting for just “cut them out” of the working place, at the first attempt to protest.

On the other hand, work overload also implies high levels of rotation and work instability, as if work stability did not existed because job protection conditions do not exist, phenomena of self-insecurity and over-demand in the work are produced, which are internalized as disciplinary practices after witnessing the consequences of not complying with these practices.

"… so much work has arrived, you have no idea of how much work you have, so much work, so there is a lot of rotation now, many people are moving around, they go, many have quit, they have fired some, a few" (SM_1:00:13:18-28).

"… in the public system, the health worker is the one who earns the least, obviously! They are going to spend the whole month in the hospital doing extra shifts, or looking after private elderly patients, or have another job which has nothing to do with a hospital, doing odd jobs outside, as they say, what does that lead to? You get sicker quicker, in the best case you're tired, and this brings excess medical leaves, you know? And with this the demand increases, so this is what we have always tried to change in our surroundings…" (SSP_2.00:38:18-32).

The ways in which the instability is expressed, with view to productive heterogeneity, is in the fragility of employment, salary flexibility and the work contract that depends on production chains and contracts between companies – which are also linked to the new forms of organization and interrelation between workers of different companies.

"… they have permanent contracts, but permanent in quotations, ‘cause this is limited to contracts with mining companies, for example, | I mean, in mines in the North, there are some colleagues that are affiliated to the union, and… they have the contract model that the

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company signs with the mining companies, for five years, the maximum time period that there is" (MI_1:00:35:12-20).

"…we are like a corporation nowadays, not only are we looking at the outsourcing issue, but at the issue of those hired in the companies, temporary services companies, which are even more vulnerable than the ones used for outsourcing" (SR_2:00:03:34-39).

Even so, in this way, in companies with a longer history, and in spite of the restructuring processes and changes in ownership, there is a high level of identification of workers with “their” company, which even goes beyond the very phenomena of instability and insecurity in general, as a form of identification. Facing changes in ownership of the company and their new organizational behavior, some leaders reveal a kind of nostalgia and a corporate identification with their diagnosis of "the new companies".

"…the processes are seen with less seriousness, the idea, let’s say, is to quickly provide the report and to invoice and that they deposit, they are worried about this, about doing things as quickly as possible, they have become more lax, softer, looser, let’s say; the rigorousness that there used to be is gone" (SI_1:00:45:34-34-40).

In the public system, the same relationship is maintained with hired and "free-lance" workers who enter into work without a work contract, but instead with a service provider contract which is accompanied by a legal limit for participation in the public service unions and a system of constrictions which make the job insecure.

"…sadly, the law doesn't let us have free-lance members, because they don't have the relationship of, let's say, the public officer, but even so we defend their situation, even though they're not… because they are workers of this system (f); for us, the free-lance workers are gaps in our hospital who sadly are workers who have a different contract and benefit setup, which we have been improving, including them in some benefits they didn't used to have" (SP_1.00:09:32-49).

"…worker’s health, even the actual gym that we have, a leisure area, in the future also a nursery, vacations, an increase of vacation, that they also have days following the years they have as free-lancers, there have been several things that we have been achieving, even with the current direction too" (SSP_1.00:16:10-8).

"…They come from outsourced companies right to this hospital. I mean, here we are talking about outsourcing the mobilization, everything transport-based, ambulances, sterilization, laboratories, are all going to be external companies…" (SSP_2.00:08:11-24).

Even so, after consulting about the implications and consequences of this duality and segmentation between workers with permanent work contracts, and adhering to the law in

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the public system, and the condition of the free-lance workers, just like a civil service provider contract, the response of the leaders is in disagree and opposition.

On one side, some say that the predominance of this duality is not focused on salaries, but more in terms of "integration" into the job and with work security/stability.

"the free-lance workers, who are people with an unfavorable condition… – although it is true that the contracts, monetarily speaking, are in line with the worker's specific pay level, these are similar to the top grades in most cases, I mean, they don’t have… there is not such a great difference in salaries, because these correspond to the specific role; if talking about shifts, a part of the shift's allocation is added in a single salary … and those who are daytime ones too; it is like even but as the starting grade let's say of each level, in this sense, they do not earn what they should be earning??" (SSP_2.00.20:15-3).

While there are also some irregularities in the public health framework with hiring free- lance workers, this situation does not always imply a segment which experiences a forced insecurity condition, but on the contrary, many times, the work insecurity is manifested as a voluntary and flexible decision on taking the job, although most can be seen to be struggling with and limited by the difficulties of finding ways for promotion which would involve greater work stability. The system of levels, like a promotion scale in terms of remunerations and benefits is one which involves the expectations of fighting work insecurity conditions, more as part of an individual adaptation strategy to existing conditions in the sector.

"… We had some cases … (f), for some professionals that had retired from the same system and were hired as free-lancers, and they really didn't have, let's say a bad payment, but most people it’s like they are in this logic in reference to his own salary" (SSP_1-00_17:44-2).

"…the reality is 30 permanent positions and the rest annual contracts (70). And as you see, to move into the permanent staff, you have to apply as people are leaving, but there are workers that have so many years of annual contracts, that suddenly, you'll have been at the same level for 12 years, and a route opens up, and they assign a certain grade to you, and afterwards they give you a different one…" (SSP_3.00:51:06-18).

This is why there is a series of initiatives trying to bring together both worker segments. In spite of these initiatives, according to union and trade union leaders, the "fear" of the most insecure workers continues to be a decisive factor in the decisions in favor of organization, collaboration and participation in unions.

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"… they are well inside of that fear’s thing, I mean, we hold assemblies, we invite them, some have gone, yes, those who have been here the longest, I believe, and this is because we have… to a certain degree, we have put the seeds in them that they have to go, that we are going to support them against anything, I mean, that we are going to give them the support, but there’s a lot of fear…" (SSP_2.00:49:20-37).

In the private sector, work stability appears as one of the expectations that mobilize union action, this being due to the high presence of job rotation phenomena in low qualification sectors and their consequences for the union organizations. This makes possible a collective demand in the workplace for security, stability and new working conditions.

"… the only thing that we have achieved, which is the most important thing I would say, is work stability! In the past, two or three people would leave per week, now just 1 or 2 a month, that's important work stability (SE_1.00:48:20-25).

"…I don't know if insecure is right, I believe that the word is not enough because one thing is that you cannot organize yourself. Two, that they are outsourced, this work period is subject to what they decide, right? The other it’s that you don't have … every 20 days, every 3 months, every 6 months, every year, and the longest they last is 3 years, there are very few cases where outsourcing can last, I don't know, 10 years, 12 years or more, but in general terms, most are 6 months, a year, or so.." (SI_3.00:41:22-43).

"… they (the free-lancers) are a service bought, they have their receipt, they have their monthly receipt for the work they do, so they don't have the right to join unions, they don't have the right to anything because the boss, I mean, the guy in charge of us is going to say bye, take care…" (SSP_2.00:46:20-32).

Instability alone is created by conditions of work insecurity combined with work overload and insufficient wages that the job is managed by, as is the case with security guards. That gives a panorama about the precarious environment for work.

"…now those that are leaving, and many go but they are the new ones, they go because they didn’t like the company, ‘cause they didn't go, ‘cause they couldn't cope with the workload, ‘cause of the greater staff there is in the stores, because the workload is greater, in the stores they pay less and work more, I mean, they have to be there 9 hours a day, and in other words practically open, take into account their break and that is a lot more time" (SE_1.00:49:18-9).

The combination work instability, productive heterogeneity and the policy of multinational companies, as is the case, e.g., at Walmart, are among the causes that would have prevented or would at least not have facilitated, even in 2012, the forming of bonds of solidarity and communication between the unions at an international level, which is curious

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as retail is a highly organized sector with large capital investment and with high union activity at a national level.

Even so, reference is made on several occasions to adopting an internationalist attitude with a global perspective by union leaders who promote the concept of "brotherhood" as one of the bases of collaboration between workers of different countries, despite their different backgrounds, societies and working conditions. Even so, this relation (of "brotherhood") appears to be "lacking" and is not used as a strategy nowadays, which shows a substantial weakness of unionism, and points to a "national" way when visualizing strategies to combat work insecurity.

"…the brotherhood practically doesn't exist between German workers and Chilean workers, maybe there are intentions, but the intentions or… or an insecurity management, no; this it is not exactly this, brotherhood is sharing your need with my need or your success with my success; it is living, it is working a project together, arm in arm, with everything that this means, going through hunger and cold, but that is the brotherhood, that is the brotherhood…" (SI_3.00:50:17-31).

"…the issue is doing what they do in Argentina. Taking over industries, companies or just striking. If the CUT worked together, if all the national workers came together and went on strike and downed tools for a couple of hours, do you know how many millions the business owners lose? I mean, that is downing tools for half an hour, one hour, one protest without even leaving the company or leaving to go around the block, but downing the tools and saying I am not going to work now…" (SI_2.01:28:19-30).

The fact is that instability is not an obstacle for the development of new possibilities’ identification and action. The unions understand that is necessary a strategic union, alliance and collaboration, like a principle for organization and successful in the working class’s demand.

9.2.2.- Instability and Atomization

When looking at the relationship between work instability and the phenomenon of atomization, it is recognizable that the common practice of a "shift system", which complicates stability in the workplace, creates obstacles for identifying and generating spaces for meeting inside the workspace.

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"…The work shifts are everywhere, everything through a shift, very few of us have contracts, let's say, daytime ones, but at least, at least in the laboratory there are shifts" (SM_2.00:33:01-08).

"…there are contracts… um… for 45, there are part-time shifts which are 36 hours, fixed terms and… um… permanent ones. This type of contract.. part-time? Part-time there are some that are 20 hours, but there are very few of those" (SPR_2:00:10:12-19).

"…we are paramedic technicians, orderlies and administrative staff. There is a full-time staff, and there is a fixed-term staff. And apart from this there are REPLACEMENT contracts, which are kind of like (…) they have a contract, not many rights, and those that come to be the …. How to say it? They are not free-lance either, they are replacement contracts, they don't have the same salary we have, they cut it like this (…) they don’t receive emergency location, they have shift's allocation, in this way they pay them different values per hour. But in the first few months they don't have the right to medical leave, they don’t pay them their leaves" (SSP_3.00:13:53-22).

In addition, the logic of individualizing the work relations has discouraged long-term projections of union organizations. Those who enter the union are in most cases those who have greater work stability, i.e. full 45-hour shifts and permanent contracts.

"…45 hours. But lately the issue of contracts has been considered a little more, like for 36 hours, for 20 hours, but the people are registered too, they are interested too" (SPR_1.00:14:45-49).

"… let’s say we are about 120 (workers) who are in the trade union of 650 currently. If the incentive for retirement appears, 10 will leave, we are going to be left with 110, and instead of going up we are falling, because if there is no contract, they cannot join a… a union" (SSP_2.00:51:23-29).

"…we said and they were in our trade union, so we said, c'mon, they are going to hire even more, and nope, it wasn't like that, administrative staff were hired and they hired not for 44, but for 22 hours, the hours were shared out, I mean, all that matters here that… but what is clear is that who lost was the union in the sense that now there are two workers less, I don't know, like, to get together and fight, so this is not helping at all, at all, at all" (SP_2.00:48:12-36).

On another note, the condition of insecure work manifest through, among other things, atomization and individualization often encourages and promotes, paradoxically, a negative identification with the job, which can then lead to organization in a union. This is what happened in the formation of the union at the multinational chain Walmart in the city of Temuco, and of an industrial union in Santiago.

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"…the company at the time was a company that, apart from having a good amount of workers, abused the people, the workers, a lot. There was a lot of abuse (…) people who were not paid extra hours, they would retain your salary, they made you work at night, you could be locked in for 3 days (…) something that you wouldn't have imagined could happen in such a big international company. But yeah, it did happen" (SR_3.00:02:13-24).

"… I believe that, initially, we were not fighting about salaries; I think that during the first few years we fought for a proper treatment, as people and as workers. This was the first goal to be part of what was left of the organization" (SI_2.00:07:19-27).

This lack of foresight is also linked to the loss of solidarity, which is visible in the removal of certain meanings in the work sphere, like the word "fellow worker" and a loss of the "union spirit", which appears as a political element for itself and as the "conditioning" of affiliation and union participation practices. That is associated with the presence of a "workers conscience" in relation to joining to a union, and their expectations in terms of organization models. "…I always use the words fellow worker, and for some it makes them uncomfortable, therefore I have been violently put to task in this way, violently (…)" (SM_1.00:35:36-43) "…up to 1970, our parents were fewer, there was less access let's say…um … um… to literature, there was greater restriction, right? There were lower school times; however, those workers had more conscience, there was a high percentage in the unions. Of course, the legislation was different, but… well, I like that, I would like to go back…to recover in some time, that here in Chile it could be recovered… I know that I am, I am old, you know? But I think that I can contribute something to my union (…)" (SM_2.00:49:52-4).

"…I believe that in the long run we are going to have to reach something like that, and it would be very good that the people chose their leaders, and not that the leaders choose the rest. IT WOULD BE VERY, VERY GOOD, but to set that up you have to create a conscience in the people.." (SSP_3.01:34:27-38).

This "previous" situation, based on a "recovery" and "conscience", is combined with the idea of generating new nuclei of solidarity so as to confront the primacy of the logic of atomization, starting from the recognition of spaces that are outside the pure work setting, and that serve to even out the conditions of "workers" about the insecure and segmented characteristics that the job entails.

"… hopefully we’ll start to change the mentality that I was telling you about, in terms of the networks, we cannot ignore the workers that are outsourced, that don’t belong to the main company, they do the same work, work the same shift, eat the same, meet to play football, meet to have a drink at night, go out dancing together and so on (SR_2.00:22:30-37).

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In the retail sector, for example, one of the practices that extend the institutionalization of the segmentation as a gravitating practice for the differentiation of the workers and the weakening of their collective power is the Multi-ID legislation. This allows that a company can have a fragmented chain, generating in its wake a series of companies that, in spite of being controlled by the same owner, assume an independent legal representation, which becomes an obstacle for the condensation of union forces in a collective bargaining process or for representation as such.

"…it's not that these companies appeared out of nowhere, they are affiliates of the others, but to escape a little from having external workers, they made a… a chain here, because if you pay attention to the names of the legal representatives, they are the same as the other companies, while no legislation is made in terms of the multi-Ids like corresponds, we are going to have these lame front-men…" (SR_4.00:51:23-30).

"…they are all the same, but they create their affiliates, their companies with other names and their dirty tricks, to avoid the compensation fund for years of services, having stronger unions and all that stuff" (SR_2.00:54:34-39).

"…what happened at Walmart, one, this is a, the problem that each store is different, we are, well we were before, before the holding or the ID unifying company, we were all Hiperlider, we were around 120 and so stores, from which we were 120 or so different IDs" (SR_3.00:11:11-20).

At the same time, the company and the mid-level management create a network of negative differentiation of the workers by means of the selectivity between those who are hired directly by the company and those who are outsourced, which does not lead to a lack of identification between the workers facing this situation:

"…here there is a substantial difference in terms of their treatment of the worker hired by the main company and the outsourced workers, and here they have realized that there is a difference, but (f) among workers this makes no difference" (SR_2.01:15:06-12).

"…at the end of the day we never have, we are never going to know the employer and we are never going to have the opportunity of even getting a sight of them, because in the end the… the manager receives the instructions and the manager is the one who makes them go round nationally and we all comply with them, in one way or another…" (SI_3.00:56:10- 21).

Job instability promotes dynamics of self-insecurity and exploitation among the workers, which is highlighted by the union leaders. This point of job stability is identified as one of

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the main objectives as it would improve the workers' well-being and also facilitate union activity itself.

"…the fear is in the two hundred or so workers that work in the company, there is the latent fear of >>Will I be fired tomorrow?<< (…) if you have 220 workers and every three months you are replacing between 30 and 40 % of your workers, you tell me, How do the rest work? Do they work well? Is their job safe? They don't work safely, and if the boss comes and he says to me: <>, I am going to stay for an hour, ‘cause if I don't stay, I'm a bad worker" (SR_3.00:15:17-34).

Instability becomes a key element in the workers' construction of strategies to confront atomization, which has driven the unions to trying to resolve this matter, which has inevitably come into conflict with the traditional union models (in contrast to the advance of instability) especially by the current demands of a group of workers that does not respond to the traditional vertical models.

9.2.3.- Instability and the Vertical Organization Logic of the Union

In spite of what could be thought, in terms of "common sense", predominant job instability in the private sector does not impede organizational flexibility processes that surpass legal institutional models or openings towards the horizontal integration between unions.

"…for us the issue of joining the unions has nothing to do with the legal relation that exists today, but the work is important; if there is a job together they are a part of a whole, or we are already thinking each one own their own" (SR_1.00:08:26-34).

The retail sector, for example, represents an instance, in spite of the work instability of their job conditions, of local organization that challenges the VOL of a single national union as a hegemonic logic in the history of Chilean unionism.

"…today unions at a national level, many of them are not working, they don't let them, it’s like when the government works in a centralized manner, the regions are left unprotected, they are not given enough information, participation or anything". (SR_1:00:04:38-40).

"…each store is completely different, ‘cause they have different administrators, which means that we had one hundred or so administrators, each one of them was a manager, when in a store they fire 10 people, the leaders don't move, they don't come to see what happened with these 10 people; however, if you have an autonomous union you see the problem in your store…" (SR_3.00:12:38:50).

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The reasons for radical’s decisions, include "participation", the managerialism of union leaders and their lack of concern for regional realities, which leads to divisions and tensions inside unions and their larger organizations. "… a few years before | setting up a local union here, and of course they say the leaders arrive in a van, a van of course with a TV, then the common worker was shocked, they surprised a leader with signs of grandeur, you get me? If a leader wanted cigarettes they called a taxi to bring him cigarettes, and all this crap started hitting and hitting hard, they didn't worry about the store's problems…? (SR_1:00:04:45-52).

"… I think that what the leaders lack is listening to the masses, listening to what the people want, to what the people need (…) They are not doing what the people want and they are being divided, being divided. | and in general, the same is happening everywhere" (SSP_3.01:25:08-29).

The responses to the question about decisions of this type, that is to say, building organizations at a decentralized level of companies (within the store’s setting), even though getting rid of the national organization may imply a structural weakening of the union's bargaining power (as a traditional organization model), show a greater trust in a resource and internal organizational capacity than in the structural capacity of the union. It is this common assuming the guarantee of positive results for workers with work stability.

"… we, as a store union, have better bargaining power than the national union who had more than a thousand workers, because they couldn't coordinate a strike or even a vote for strike at a national level…" (SR_1.00:06:27-30).

"…look, before our union was created here… um... the company rotated almost 40% of their workers every 3 months" (SR_3.00:13:46-59)…today, due to our efforts, every six months, about 2% rotation is produced, if I showed you today, and I have the information in my computer, in my store over 85, 87% are workers who have over 5 years working in the company (SR_3.00:15:41-50).

This division between local and national is seen as revitalizing the local organization, which does not exclude the continuity of communication relations and the exchange of experiences, through platforms and using IT resources, with the rest of the local unions at company level and with the union at the national level.

"…making collective contracts transparent, every bargaining period is an advance for each one of us, so what do we do, the union which negotiates today is going to give the collective contract to the union that negotiates tomorrow, so in our bargaining we are always going forward and for everyone, even though we are not together" (SR_1.00:08:33-44).

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"…(the assemblies) are every week in Santiago. Meeting of federations. But you see that we live on the other side of the country (Temuco), and this means that to go there is a cost (…) it’s time-consuming. So we try to go once a month, or twice a month, to the federation meetings in Santiago, always (…) in the other days that there are meetings we can connect because they are via Skype (SR_3.00:54:53-09).

Even so, instability seems to be an issue that is not generally put on the agenda of union leaders which means a questioning of the practices that govern the direction and internal democracy of the organizations.

"… I’ve never heard that Arturo Martinez or de la Puente have offered their resignation, so that someone from lower down comes and says, you know, I want to take over, I am going to fly the flag because we want to make a structural change of all this mess that we have today" (SR_4.00:24:48-56).

On the other hand, the VOL are also transgressed in terms of segmentation and instability. The cooperation between unions, beyond the sector and multiform character of the workers that represent each organization, is based on the existence of a "know how" which is transmitted from the oldest unions to youngest ones, to prepare them to face the complexity of the labor norms and of operating in the union field. There is also a lot of "learning by doing" which is emphasized as a common learning framework with respect to the norms, experiences and day-to-day events involved in unionism.

"…my relation with the rest of the unions has been like…. I’ve had them there…um… I have been guided by them, I have checked with the same people that have worked in the unions, that have been in unions and I have asked them from their experience, what they have seen and this has helped the way I act…" (SE_1:01:04:19-27).

"…when I got into this I had no idea whatsoever (…), then with slip-ups which haven't been that big, fortunately, because I have been careful in the matter, (…) they have been helping me. Anyhow I’ve been picking up experiences here and there, and not only from the presidents, from the leaders but also from people joining the union" (SI_2.00:42:24).

This transfer can be part of a collective learning process in the union or workplace which promotes the decentralization of decision-making and strengthening of the organization, by means of a more independent and direct activity of the affiliates concerning their rights and expectations. "…it was not necessary that you, that they will call you to solve a problem anymore, but they would say no, these are my rights, so they would say I am going to do what is

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appropriate, if as a boss you don’t agree with this, well, go and speak with the leader, but this is what I am going to do and this is what I should do and… I believe that is what we at the end of the day… the leaders, have to understand" (SI_3.00:43:39-57).

Finally, the ongoing increase in work insecurity, if not met with an adequate response from union leaderships i.e. if not matched with a modernization of union practices, weakens the internal cohesion of unionism. This situation is illustrated by the emergence of new central unions under the wings of CUT, demanding mechanisms with greater "transparency" and "unity", and is mainly a result of the continuity of the legacy of leaders from the time of the dictatorship in union orientations.

"…the central unions know that they need to have one, a single, a single focus!, what we are not happy with is the heads that are doing that (…) but if there were to be something, I don't know, that could be shown, I don't know… something stronger, more transparency, more organization…um ... better productivity in the sense of negotiations, I think that the situation would be pretty different, pretty different" (SSP_2.01:23:20-31).

"…as the CONFENAT was reformed, because there in the CONFENAT you still have, leaders that were from the dictatorship and that are still there. For example, Domingo Silva was from the dictatorship, a military man and was appointed in the dictatorship, and continues being a leader even now" (SSP_3.00:08:11-20).

Instability is, in this way, a new possibility for develop a more radical unions, against the position more moderate in the labor relations from the historical unions in Chile. This gives some clues about the diagnostic make for many unions’ leaders about the necessary change in practices like accountability, democracy and transparency, which is attributed to the problems inside the traditional unionism and his leaders.

In this sense, the dictatorship still institutionalizes as it has left a disciplinary legacy, both in labor legislation matters and in the continuity of leadership, both political and economic, which has converted instability into a disciplinary dynamic in Chile.

9.2.4.- Disciplinary Instability and Institutionalization

The instability expressed in the types of contract involves an uncertain form of facing institutional discipline in the workplace. "Concern" and "fear" become important factors in the constitution of workers' organizations and in their protest practices.

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"…in the case of us as workers… um… of a company, what happens if we go out on the street? We’re all going to be fired, the only opportunity that we have to go on the street and show what we feel is when we are negotiating and we go on strike. Apart from this we have no possibility…" (SF_1.01:22:15-22).

"…you tell me, in the large marches, when have you seen individual workers like from supermarkets, large retailers? When? Have you ever seen them even once? I'd be surprised if you have seen them, you have seen just the leaders who are the only ones that can go, but you haven't seen large groups (SR_3.01:02:57-08).

Paradoxically, when one moves from a position of contractual frailty to on of greater stability, the phenomenon of "fear" may still be reproduced. This is what happens in the public health service in the transfer from free-lance contracts to permanent contracts (with greater stability), and in the private sector with the phenomenon of outsourcing.

"… people say they lose their fear when they are permanent", and there are people, since they are young permanent staff, that have dared to shout out a little, ‘cos people still say: since I am permanent they can't come and tell me: you're out! Unless doing so through a legal ruling, but since the permanent contract one that… um… before or up to the 31st of December or until their services are needed, then it’s bye, bye!" (SSP_1.01:01:37-48).

"…when you have spent fifteen days (on legal strike), you are exhausted ‘cause the people that are already in the unions think <>, but nope, this doesn't always happen with outsourcing. It doesn't happen because (the employer) arrives, hires someone else, and period. And he pays for only one. When he hires from the first day, then can hire ten more… he doesn't care…" (SI_3.01:29:15-29).

In the case of the private system, one of the issues that confront union organization is the legislation pertaining to outsourcing. Its approval in 2007 meant a dual paradox for the workers, representing a legislative framework that protected the labor rights of an insecure sector of the workforce on the one hand and, at the same time, a legal ratification of this dual and insecure work condition, with "first class workers" and "second class workers".

"…before the outsourcing law, there was still hope, there was and it was not necessary that we chat more actively within the, within our aspiration (…), the outsourcing law came and we realized that everything that had been said to the world, about no more first and second class workers, about that all workers, plant workers or outsourced ones, would have the same salary and the same working conditions… and that didn’t happen…" (SI_3.00:20:32- 58).

In the case of the constitution of union organizations, the law protects the union leader with a “protected status”, but it does not do the same for those affiliated to the union. And in the

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case of company unions (at national level), they are allowed to have a system of delegates for each company, who are not protected by the legislation, which encourages a disciplinary control and favors the unions at a decentralized level (in the workplace).

"…a union delegate does not have a protected status, so he is always risking being fired, and when the delegate isn't even given a phone to be able to contact Santiago, it didn't work… it’s very difficult to be a delegate, it was almost suicide to be a delegate". (SR_1:00:06:22-26).

When referring to intercompany unions (SI), the delegate system allows for the possibility of accepting a protected status, but as we have already analyzed, the bargaining power of the SI is mediated by the legal difficulties in making the bargaining and strike effective, which essentially constitutes a relief to the organization’s protection in their structural weakness.

"…we, in all these companies… um… how do you call that, delegates, the good thing that the intercompany union has, versus a company union, is that our delegates have a protected status just like union leaders, the company unions don't…" (SR_2.00:55:20-26).

"…in the intercompany union, only in the intercompany union, all the intercompany unions have right to have delegates with protected status; the federations don't because the federations have many leaders, we are 12, but in the intercompany union we are 3 leaders, nationally, but we have in each company, we can have 3 delegates, per company so, we have many delegates, we have more than 18" (SR_4.00:56:42-8).

The power of the legislation is seen as an obstacle for the fluid action of workers' organizations, where the setup vis-à-vis business power consolidates an asymmetric form of labor relations.

"...For everything, today the law tells you how you have to be setup, not how you need to be setup, in other words, you can be a company, an establishment, with a minimum of such members, a maximum of unions directors, of x directors per union… loads of obstacles that today help the businessman" (SR_1.00:10:13-17)

"…it would be great if the law would be passed so that… the people could decide on, that the intercompany unions, or the small unions, could be grouped into larger unions, I think that from the same juridical personality, because a health company is not going to join a company of, I dunno, let's say mining". (SPR_2:01:02:43-49).

With respect to the way in which work instability runs counter to union strengthening, several leaders agree that the "union formation" experiences promoted by the government

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do not generate the expected results and content, and furthermore, a certain repetition of contents already learned by the leader in union practices occurs.

"…it's the same that I was saying about the issue with the employment SEREMI (Regional Ministerial Secretary), about the union technical degree issue, which is good anyway but I haven't seen it (…), but I have been told that this and that proves this and that, and in the end I find that what they are focusing you on, what they are showing you is the same that you have already learned (SE_1.01:23:09-14).

"…I have realized that there are many loopholes in the Chilean Law, there are many problems, and sadly we, the workers, we always get the short end of the stick, we are the ones wronged (…), those who are always going to have this problem. And the union matter is there to be able to counteract this, supposedly, ‘cause nothing happens here either, ‘cause the support that we have from the government is not what it should be (SI_3.00:24:11-22).

Furthermore, this would seem to indicate certain cooperation and institutionalized trust between the political authorities and the union organizations. More than a real form of intervention, the legislation establishes the norms and the structural problems which accompany work insecurity.

To this is complex model of discipline is added that the fines imposed on companies do not directly benefit the unions, in economic terms, which constitutes a limiting factor for economic and temporary "investment", added to the "risk" which a trial or legal dispute with the companies implies.

"… the only thing that the government is helping you with is learning how to fine the company, the only thing that they are teaching you, they are teaching you how you can exercise the law with the company, in the company, to say ok, if the company is not doing this, you are going to the inspectorate, you will make a complaint, the inspectorate goes, fines them, money for the STATE, the only thing they do is line their pockets with money" (SR_4.00:45:38-50).

"…if you see a labor inspectors and the penalty applied in the inspections, then you are going to see what is live day-to-day, because you don't receive anything, at all because all the fines in the end go to the STATE…" (SI_3.00:10-23-29).

"…because they don't pay you, because they don't give you your… your clothing, your safety shoes, because you do not have decent work conditions, or in other words, everything you did in this period, nobody compensates you for anything, nobody helps you with anything…" (SI_2.00:47:29-41).

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This vulnerability seems to be typical in the labor space. This is reinforced by the inspection’s institutions that are dedicated to punish the employers for bad practices, but without direct benefits for the workers.

9.2.5.- Instability and defensive/reactive Logics

Instability at the time of consolidating a defensive logic has many expressions. The need of placing the issue of work stability as a strategic exercise of the unions ends up being a recurring discursive element of union leaders, which can be understood as a defensive practice against high rotation and job flexibility.

"…the task of a union is to make sure that their union and all their people in the union have job stability, have an emotional stability as a worker and that this is permanent and constant through time…" (SF_2.01:20:12-17).

This tends to be accentuated in the case of transferring know-how between new and old generations of the union organization, which is mainly based on the conformations of feelings and imagines associated to union’s organization and the process of criminalization and political persecution suffered in the dictatorship with the stigma of "communism" and "subversive”.

"… I believe that the youth have other | other priorities nowadays, but less union culture, in other words, having a good time and studying is an issue too, one doesn't have to limit this right but (…) hopefully someone becomes interested so that they rise up (f) and start learning" (SSP_1. 01:02:22-2).

"…today we’ve seen a difference in the generation in… purely age issues, I mean, we have people that have been in the company for 18 years, and they have not wanted to join the union because they’re afraid, ‘cause you have to understand that these guys who have been in a company for 18 years are now 40 or so, and they were born in the dictatorship, so the union for them are communists, who are bad people, who want to fight and are going to restrict our possibilities of promotion in the company, while the new kids (…) all (f) have joined the union, and they are kids that are 23, 24, and that you call to a meeting and the guy arrives!! (f) to the meeting" (SR_2:01:10-29).

Instability as a common condition in a segment of workers, also works in the other way. Instead of constituting a phenomenon of coercion towards non-union affiliation, instability

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generates new affiliation guidelines that are found and centered in the idea overcome the "fear" of punishment, embracing a life of job instability and permanent work mobility.

The difficulties for union leaders in conveying this vision of affiliation to the rest of the workers are many, and there are no clear methods as to how to foster the growth of the union, which again leads to insecurity and instability, as sources of a "fear".

"…when I call to assembly, obligatory for the people registered in the union, I also invite the people that are not registered. Because this is the only way that they get to know us…and so, that I try to convince them, (…) I am convincing. But we can't do much more." (SPR_1:00:36:29-45).

"…I believe that more than a legal limit, I think that it is personal. … I believe that it is a personal thing, a personal decision, and it is a little bit of fear and little bit of laziness, too". (SM_1:00:58:39-52).

In a certain way this gap in affiliation strategies, according to some of those interviewed, has lead to unions turning into benefit stores that make entry into a union attractive, which in a way has weakened the practices to pursue other labor rights associated with phenomena like work insecurity as a whole.

"… here there are many unions that have become a mutual benefit society, at the end of the year a box, for the 18th September a little party, and meanwhile the year goes by, and all year long the company is changing the work shift, lowering our salaries, they don't want to collectively bargain, there is so much squeezing, and you see it up and down the country" (SR_2:00:17:28-35).

"… sometimes they have criticized us, the leaders, because we don't give family boxes (…) I think that a union is not aiming at having family boxes for their affiliates or for their members. The union has to be focused on the worker earning a decent wage, receiving good treatment from the company; collective bargaining is for this, to be able to achieve that we have a salary… um… a more… a fairer salary from all the profits that the company can earns" (SR_3.00:10:07-18).

On the other hand, it is clear that the phenomena of insecurity have been facilitators of responses from union organization and the development of repertories, because there is a correlation between work-abuses and the need of stopping them through the union. Nevertheless, the unions haves always been seen as reactive and with difficulties to understand the historical depth of privatization, restructuring and work insecurity.

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"… to be able to create something solid so that the workers stop having these insecurities, because it was horrifying…" (SR_3.00:03:11-15).

"… I believe that it (hospital concessions) wasn't really something to be worried about at that time, at least not to any greater extent, because it could be seen, it could already be seen that some other parallel thing was growing, I believe this and that it was quicker, that it was education, and I believe that it wasn't taken… it wasn't taken, not seriously anyhow, but the importance that it deserved wasn’t given to it…" (SSP_2.01:01:29-41).

The best way to defend stability is summarized by some leaders as part of the knowledge that the leader and the union must have about their company, i.e. in order to make them become a relevant player by giving informed substantial responses to the proposals of restructuring and dismissals that companies promote nowadays.

"… I believe that a fundamental step that a union organization has to take is knowing their company, if not everyone… if you don't know your company, sadly you are not going to be able to negotiate with your company (…) what's true is that you learn to manage, that you learn to get to know your company, what do they sell? How much do they earn? Um… Who is it the problem that stops earning? The isolations, The results? All this, because if you are ignorant about this, the company can say anything, and they can have the gall to change a whole group of workers (laughs) but if you know your company, oh no! (SI_2.00:57:34-3).

"To be successful you have to be prepared, you know? You have to prepare yourself, know your enemy ‘cause this thing is war, buddy|. It's like football, you have to watch the videos, know your enemies, knowing the company, going there with names…" (SI_3.00:20:42-50).

In these lines we find an emerging discourse in the new strategies of the unions which accompanies a social critique of the conditions in which the production and economic processes occur, especially in with regard to the nature of the neoliberal policies, as well as their consequences related to a situation of "deprivation" and "misery" at a social level.

"… tomorrow, maybe they’ll take everything; in fact, that is what is happening, they are looting the country, they take everything and they’re going to leave us with nothing, I mean, the only thing that we’re going to inherit is hunger and misery" (SF_1.00:18:42-7).

"…it has a lot to do with neoliberalism that was imposed, that has existed in the social environment in general in the country, because together with neoliberalism the large transnationals that came here have risen, and they have been cover, little by little, what are the different social aspects, union aspects and the workers…" (SSP_2.04:18:22-31).

"… most workers, both at a business level, health level… um... Public… um… I think that we all think the same, we all think the same that now the government got involved in neoliberalism to commercialize everything that can be commercialized…" (SP_2.00:22:03- 13).

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In this way, instability is conceived of as part of a political decision of reproduction of labor precarity in the world of work, which places at the center of the debate the role of union organizations in relation to the political system, their abilities and political force to have an influence on the parliamentary debate or the presidential agenda, as well as the regulating and inspecting institutions that mobilize instability as political decision.

9.3.- Insecurity

Insecurity can identify itself with the lack of conditions in matters of social security and protection, benefits related to vacations, health, retirement, etc., which constitute an important focal point of the vulnerability and insecurity which workers are subjected to, and which constitute the basis for negotiation with the business world in search of new practices in the company, and of dialogue with the political actors to promote new policies in the area.

In the interviews we were able to identify that the insecurity transmitted through the types of contract, especially in outsourcing, involves an important focal point for the union strategies nowadays, because without protection against the employers’ arbitrary decisions, the workers leaving in a complex situation of instability.

These strategies are moving from the problem of atomization and the consequences of disciplinary institutionalization, based on "fear" used over union action, to the constituent elements of the new practices of Chilean unionism in relation to labor precarity.

Precarity seems to be an element which often breaks up the possibilities of building union organizations with greater levels of participation and affiliation, as insecurity is also present as part of the disciplinary asymmetry in labor relations between workers and the business. Finally, the proposals move between defensive logics and vertical organization as forms of collective action, at the same time identifying problems of internal coherence in contemporary unionism.

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9.3.1.- Insecurity, identities and Atomization

Insecurity casts a problem for the conformation of work biographies and identities, which are not always the focus of union or trade union policies, because workers do not manage to connect with the collective and end up in apathy and indifference.

In the case of public health, it is safe to say that the youngsters promote a precarious identification with their insecure condition, and see the future as a condition far from being resolved, which is linked to a (perceived) duality of job insecurity and social mobility:

"… it's very few who say, as soon as I have a problem, come defend me, but when it's time to show some support, they are clueless... um... the same system, in the future, they will not care and we will not be able to tell them how they're gonna turn out…". (SSP_1:00:52:26- 29).

"… if you call them to a meeting to talk about pension funds, "No, I have such a long way to go, I have 40 years left to work, 30 years", so this is not a priority for them, but they don't realize that, from this moment, they are building their future retirement, their pensions (…) they don't care about it either". (SSP_2: 00:58:27-32).

There is no security projection horizon in the short term, and moreover there is an inclination to underestimate the experience of the older workers. This goes along with the thoughtlessness of the consequences of a pension system that does not offer guarantees of obtaining security in a pension that is sufficient to sustain a living

"… I am poor because I am up to my neck in debt because, now, so that people can retire, people who are in hospitals and who are up to 80 years old, waiting for retirement, the government still doesn't give anything, they don't give an answer to the matter of the incentive to retire so that people can leave and have a decent pension" (SSP_2.00:09:30- 39).

This apathy, on looking at the "long-term" biographical projects and old-age, also involves the perception by young people of larger union organizations in the country, like CUT, where there is a loss of interest in acting in this type of organizations or getting to know their work:

"… I believe that the people don't even, young people don't, I think that maybe they will know the CUT through some conversation or speech, because someone mentioned it,

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because of the minimum wage, due to the negotiation at the end of the year, but mainly this, people aren't interested, but you learn about the CUT through participation" (SSP_1:00:58:44-49).

"… in Chile it's difficult, young people are not all involved, and those that are, are normally because they have a defined political party. But for most young Chileans, the defined party has to do with the party on Friday (he laughs)" (SF_1:01:09:06-14).

In the retail sector, the workers who are able to join a union and the workers who belong to the union are coming closer together, although this relationship is not free of problems such as "betrayal" and "surveillance" by non-unionized workers, leading to disciplinary dynamics that discourage affiliation.

"… it is hard for us to come closer to people, but those that have never been in the union, or who are scared of it, we will defend them anyway; I mean, for us, it's the same; this is what happens with the workers who are outsourced, promotional staff who come to ask questions, so we invite them to the office, we give them assistance, we explain the procedure that they have to follow, and it's not that big a deal, but there are people that betray us and shit" (SR_1:00.22:55--7).

"… we know people that tell on us, who while in the meeting listen to us and then run to the manager and tell them all about it, they are people that betray the union movement, we can spot them but we don't know them (SR_2.00:21:34-12).

"… we heard that she got paid because the information from the company itself was not getting to us, some workers of the company actually told us no, she's actually company (laughter), she works in the company, there were several snitches spying on what we were going to do so then I started going to the meeting alone…" (SI_1.00:53:48-59).

On the other hand, insecure employment conditions, even for the most qualified tasks, mean that the unions have to be open to developing solvents tactics, because they must be prepared for negotiations with the business world and for issuing legal reports. The business world plays an important role with regard to absent guaranteed minimum work protection and security conditions.

"I work with bodily fluids which are harmful for me anyway (f). We don't have substantial security measures, though the company said that they were going to give us most of these things of … um … of protection measures and no man, that's false. Two weeks ago I had an accident in my eye because I didn't have goggles" (SPR_2:00:28:16-25).

On the other hand, insecurity institutionalizes a differentiation among the workers, which makes organization difficult and increases the sense of lack of protection, which has to be

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counteracted with initiatives that look to make changes to labor regulation in terms of achieving the uniformity of working conditions and employment contracts.

"… we're not going to change the article just like that, we'll incorporate a subsection to 183 of the labor code to give more protection to the outsourced worker, a protection they don't have currently, and because they don't have it they become a second class kind of worker". (SR_2.00:18:43-48).

"… there are many that … um … um … how could I say it, that because they are afraid of losing their work, don't get involved with those of the … um … of the trade union, us in this case, actually because they don't have what you actually said before, they don't have the security that this is going to… that actions will not be taken against them…" (SSP_2.00:05:42-54).

"… as an outsourced worker you see this directly, how your rights are violated. First because you know that the client pays your company which hires you because they control who they outsource to, they handle an x amount and then, at the end, you know … outsourcing shouldn't exist, there should be no outsourcing" (SI_1.01:27:06-15).

It is clear that the impact of insecurity discourages union activity and at the same time leads to an atomization in the workplace. This atomization seems to be in contrast to vertical organization models and logics, which have neither brought success nor gained complete acceptance among the union leaders themselves, and it constitutes one of the focal points which seem to have excluded, from union policy, a segment of workers who live in the uncertainty of job insecurity.

9.3.2.- Insecurity and Vertical Organizational Logic

One of the ways that union leadership confronts labor precarity is visible in the challenging of its own concentration in a single VOL, because on the contrary, with a more democratic and horizontal organizations, it requires dynamism within the organizations so that each member is able to know and present their points of reference when they are defending their job interests.

"… so that we are each one, as I say it, to my fellow workers in the meetings, that each fellow worker must feel like a potential union leader … um … but not just stay with that, but pass it on, that restlessness, those things" (ES_1. 00:37:52-5).

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During the last two decades, the way of resolving a given insecurity pattern adopted by union strategies enjoyed the support of political parties. Even so, the relationship has been induced vertically and unidirectionally, since in the labor policies area, as we have seen in previous chapters, there is a still a great deal of the dictatorship's legacy left in the matter.

"… it is hard for us to introduce topics such as those we have put forward as a federation, and those we want to put forward today as a corporation, because this means … um … many times becoming enemies of politics, you know, because I'm going to put forward, what we put forward is a change of the labor code, a labor code that was ratified for many years by the concertación itself, and by the right wing today, if today you take a look at the political conversations about labor issues" (SR_2.00:25:13-20).

"… CUT is more worried about their … about … about the problems they have as a party, more than about the problems of the workers and there has been a slow awakening, slow but … in some, in some areas it has been quicker …" (SI_1.00:20:58-10).

"… they fight, they argue about us (the workers), ok, but, what happens, they don't want to improve our salary, they don't want to achieve that because they are confronting each other so much in a senseless argument, ok, because it's an argument that leads nowhere. Why? Because they all want to get it, each political party wants to get what we all want. That is what they say (…) but they want to get it in their government, so they are going to keep the other one from getting what they want to get, so the only ones that lose out are us … "(SE_1.01:29: 17-34).

Upon talking to the union leaders about the role of the VOL in the relationship between the political parties and the unions, we detected skepticism towards the political parties with respect to the objective of guaranteeing welfare for the worker and their workplace, which is related to the need of "restructuring" the CUT, as this is a nee closely linked to the workers' representation within the world of work.

"… that the parties do not consider us in their policies anymore, or let's say in their organizational charts" (SM_1.00:47:37-40).

"… it is more than clear that the parties don't represent anything beyond their own interests, they don't represent our workers; they never represented us, neither the concertación nor the right wing today…" (SR_1.00:25:19-22).

"… look, I think that the CUT doesn't have to disappear, it doesn't have to because it is a reference point, it cannot disappear but it does have to be restructured, that I do think, it must be restructured… " (SI_2. 01:12:44-52).

"… today the CUT works with political directives, I mean, the socialist party tells it what to do, the communist party tells their leaders what to do and all, we don't, I believe that we create more trust in the workers ourselves" (SR_2.00:42:32-7).

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It is possible to contrast this relationship to the situation and experience of the Historical National Health Workers Federation (FENATS in Spanish) which provides a model of reorganization, started within the health trade union, the discrediting and lack of credibility of CONFENAT (a higher ranked organization), achieving the reactivation of their negotiation models and a critical action with the political parties.

The criticism can be summarized in two quotes from the interviews we carried out. One of them mentions red tape and the vertical representativity in the corporatist agreements of the higher ranked organizations; and the second one, which comes from a retail union leader, asserts that politicization is the key problem of unionism and their organizations:

"… it was hard for us! (f) let's say we started from zero, from winning the people over again and telling our workmates, our colleagues, that… what were our principles, our values, who we were working for and our focus was the health workers, and not a political party thing like the other FENAT was, the constitution of other FENAT (…) the break comes from a purely political thing, for the approval of the health reform, which they pass to represent before the ministry of CONFENAT and they signed the agreement, three leaders. So there is one from this region as well"? (SSP_1.00:05:24-6).

"… I think that the CUT became too political, there are things that they ask for, that just plainly go against the worker, it's no good for this to continue, on the contrary we keep crushing it, and we keep crushing it …" (SR_3.01:14:39-47).

In experiences like these one can discern the view of unionists concerning the interdependence between political parties and the unions which, in the end, prevents their collective action and organization. This is added to the objective of benefiting interests found in the individual-private sphere rather than in the collective of the workers. Anyway, this is not a unitary discourse referring to political parties, since other union leaders see the need of a political representative, as a negotiation factor and a way to facilitate agreements looking towards for labor reforms.

"… if one presents bills and wants to change this thing, you have to become an enemy of politics, when today the national union leaders at the top, the big bosses of the central unions, are practically, mates!'(…)" (SR_3.01:14:39-47).

"… the elections are very well cooked. Because there is no other reason for people to be leaving CONFENATS. We find, or I as an officer find, completely laughable that they

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went with Piñera on a trip abroad; I think it's an attack against the workers" (SSP_3.00:09:21-29). "… we have to realize that the enemy is there in front of us and not standing next to us. And you have to learn to work with the ones that are alongside you to achieve something. But if you tie yourself politically then … maybe you won't be able to strike the blow you need, because of these political ties. (SP_2.00:35:09-18).

"… there has to be a kind of leadership that can, that can move everybody else and within that, I don't know, man, if there are political parties, or if there is one political party that it would also help to create alliances, you know, because if I have a good leader, well then the party has to make an alliance with another party work, but that promotes an alliance with the same, the same cause…" (SSP_2.01:20:04-18).

Insecurity also becomes an essential issue if we assemble a profile of the orientations union leader need to develop nowadays, whether in the public sector or in the private one, because insecurity imposes itself as a cross-cutting phenomenon in both sectors.

"… we have always had to try to implement, not implement but carry out demands in the best way possible … um … and that the worker can get there, their demand in the sense that if they have been working for years, if they have given them their lives, man, it better be a good job, a good working environment, (…)… um… job abuses which is something you see a lot, and that they go straight to a good retirement…" (SSP_2.00:35:02-17).

"… we cannot have a worker that (…) doesn't have a stable career path, I mean, if I am at a certain grade then I cannot have the top grade that a worker can enter into, for example, in the public administration it is 25. The worker cannot have 10, 15 years of work here and still be at grade 25, I mean, they have to have a career path and we have talked about this and presented the requests, for there to be a career path…" (SP_2.01:32:17-35).

9.3.3.- Insecurity and Disciplinary Institutionality

Insecurity deeply affects the design of instruments and collective bargaining processes. As some union leaders state, "the legal strike" becomes a device hard to apply if you must expect a set of sanctions from the employer, that is to say, this pressure tool in the hands of the unions itself becomes truly insecure.

"… we use the maximum tool, that, that is insecure in itself deep down, that is going on strike, a legal strike" (SF_1.00:33: 52 –3).

"… what are the effects of the labor code, where we are completely unprotected, in a bargaining where we have an actual right to strike, we have the right to strike, we can go

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out and fight, but the company has the right to replace us. Is there then any effect, any harm done to the company? (SR_3.01:03:54-5).

"… Is it a bargaining tool?, it's insecure, it's a tool but a very insecure one…" (SI_2.00:31:14-17).

These situations require the union leadership to develop new discourses in order to strengthen and develop these collective processes which involve the loss of "fear" in a condition of insecurity and to challenge the insecurity of tools like the legal strike, where workers are subject to being replaced or not being paid for the days they are on strike.

"… if today strikes in terms of dough (money) are lost for workers; those days are discounted, the workers on strike are replaced, in the end after 15 days they can be reincorporated one by one, and that is hard for the workers, the strike, anyway, man, then you have to give value to other things for the workers, a value of, let's say, of respect, of struggle…". (SR_1.00:12:49-54).

"… this issue I find, that the unions are very helpless | legally because the company can hire more people, I mean a company doesn't pay the days on strike, I mean, the only one that loses is the worker; many people left us, who wanted to leave the union because of the huge psychological burden…" (SPR_3.01:04:13-26).

"… you didn't receive dough from anywhere, I mean, it was complicated for me, because my wife was on strike, 'cos she also worked with us and there was me on strike, I mean, those forty days or the month and a half, We didn't bring any money home…" (SI_2.00:43:12-21).

In terms of legal institutionality, contractually stipulated duration conditions and work shifts of workers have no impact on participation in the union, though there are difficulties concerning participation in meetings and similar situations, which requires mobilizing tactics that keep the basis informed and support the workers, in order to promote the sense of belonging and cohesion of the union.

"… the labor code says that these must be workers who have a valid contract, nowhere does it say whether this contract is definite or indefinite; they have to be current staff and deal with all your people in the company, nothing else, that is what the law requires from us…" (SR_3. 01:22:36-45).

"… there are many places where… when you see that people are in their homes, they aren't going to come to a meeting or an assembly, and those that are in shift cannot come out, so anyway you have to use the system of delegates per unit, you conduct a meeting with the delegates, you tell them the whole thing and they reply (…), then, you give them an explanatory leaflet, straight to the point, and people become empowered with what you are showing them" (SSP_3.01:07:29-48).

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One of the ways of challenging insecurity is collective bargaining. But, bargaining in Chile is very complicated and paradoxically disciplinary, especially in the extension of benefits of the bargaining to all the company's workers and not just union members. This situation leads to disaffiliation or the atomization of workers, stopping the union's growth.

"… the companies that do this, you are part of a collective bargaining and you have all the benefits for the new workers, sure, for them being or not being part of the union doesn't have to do with the collective bargaining itself but with the sense of defending your right because that's why they join the union…" (SR_1.00:35:50-54).

"… This is like a strategy to stop the union. 'Cos of course, if I ask for something, they don't give it only to me, but to everyone. And it's a bit of… um… that the people of the union, that the people of the union are separated from the rest" (SPR_1.00:58:41 – 49).

This phenomenon weakens affiliation, since there is no exclusiveness concerning the benefits obtained in bargaining processes. In reacting to this, many union leaders aim at presenting the union as a source of benefits and welfare in itself, this promotes the union’s affiliation and strengthens the associativity, the organizational capacity, etc., trying to counter the atomization, but reproducing a new disciplinary practice for union.

"… We, in one way or another, look for greater benefits from the company for the union, we do this, so that people join us". (SPR_1.00:59:21-24).

"… the issue of benefits for union’s people, in relation to those who are not in the union, are the same. The fact is that I can fight for my union people, but … I want us all to fight for the same. Whatever we get … things, that these are concrete and beneficial for all of us" (SR_4.00:16:29-37).

Even so, there are institutional mechanisms that must be followed to generate a written and legal institutionalization of this relationship. In this context, the affiliation to and disaffiliation from pre-existing higher rank organizations stands out, and the existing political black list to block the possibility of generating new union referents, such as confederations or central unions.

“… Cristian was explaining that it was enough for us to call a vote, for us to change, and automatically one becomes affiliated, me, and dealing with this, sending a letter to the confe… to the CONSFETEMA "informing them that we have become disaffiliated because we entered the CTC (…), if the motion to enter the CTC is won, we're automatically outside

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CONSFETEMA and then we was informed, the, the, the… an administrative process is undone, you could say, informed with a letter of the formalities that are required, in this case a certified letter, they informed us and that was all, we have been disaffiliated" (SM_2.00: 25:21-8).

"… We set up our confederation … um …. || Legal, and after that it was dissolved. We were told we were not legal and we had to restart the process, again. Do you get it? (…) we were asked that the all our members became disaffiliated from CONFENATS, and then after (…) we held the vote for the bases for the disaffiliation from CONFENATS, the labor inspectorate arrived (laughter) and the Labor Inspector says:<>.|| <>, <>. This is March 2011. But the thing is… in Valparaiso where the foundation took place, we were told that the members had to become disaffiliated from CONFENATS, and <>. And this was because of changes in the government, which led us to doing that" (SSP_3.01:31:35-06).

If we understand insecurity as a broad scenario of the extension of insecurity conditions to social life in general, we understand that the analysis made by several union leaders attributes a "conformism" in the (socio-political) "insecurity", which in Chile in the 1990s, during the process of "democratic transition", translated into a unionism being more and more dependent on the action of political parties:

"… democracy was recovered and I thought that the union movement was going to be closer to the parties, I think that having given it all, let's say, all the responsibility to the political parties, I think it was disastrous, and the best example is that the concertaciòn ended up losing; I think that social movements should have had a more active participation in the early years, and that this should have lasted in time" (SM_1.01:01:12-19).

While dependence on the parties was kept as a common practice for the last two decades, and the role of labor institutions, in the specific case of collective bargaining, was maintained in accordance with the legislation of 1981. Collective bargaining is seen by union leaders as a deeply disciplinary tool managed by the business world, and constituting one of the main challenges for the union movement nowadays.

"… not all workers can bargain fearlessly… those of the … the… companies can bargain, some intercompany and temporary workers don't have it, then the thing is how to do it, that we all have the right to be part of a union and to bargain; that is like one, like one of the challenges, let's say" (SM_1.00:49:02-07).

"… from the beginning there was retaliation and conflict with the company, from the first day, I mean, we went through with the bargaining and they immediately fired four colleagues" (SPR_2.00:09:19-25).

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"… we presented the collective bargaining and that was the end of the relationship and they didn't accept the requests that we (…), what we asked from the company. They simply didn't accept the conditions (…). We checked the balances, we had advice, we're talking about a union that didn't have, didn't have resources (…), there we had fifty percent of the company's workers, and up to there we presented a collective bargaining, and then we went on strike, forty seven days of strike…" (SI_3.00:15:36-58).

In this context, we see "fear" as an element articulating the discouraging practices for union action, in terms of bargaining and industrial relations, which becomes more serious in the case of outsourcing.

"… I believe that since the labor code was implemented, not one bit of it has been able to be changed, nothing… maybe it is because of the quorum, it may be a lack of willingness, I also think; I believe that, I don't know, that they adapted, those who had the power at some point; they adapted and only cared about administering the system and, in some aspects even worsen it" (SP_2.00:31:02-8).

"…What happens is that we presented the collective bargaining, we went on strike and from then on we didn't know where to go, in front of the client company which was Caja de Compensacion Los Heroes or Recourse which was an outsourcing company, if we stood outside Recourse we were going to do no harm because Recourse has a branch here…" (SPR_2.00:27:49-04).

On another note, the union leaders relate "the fear" of job insecurity to punishment and sanctions that workers may receive after complaining. Their role as "union leader" (with the protection their status gives them for their activity), then, allows them to carry out the defense of the workers, even of the most insecure ones that are not part of the organization.

"… you know how hard it is for a worker to write to you and to be responsible in a written way of what they are stating, an abuse issue; it has been difficult, very difficult and when you receive the people, even if it is orally… that's why people are not able to write it down because of fear and how scared they are of sanctions, but not for this are you going to stop a situation that is actually happening…" (SSP_1.00:11:53-3).

"… we, look, we never make a report if the worker doesn't say that that's what they want you to do, we don't bypass the worker (…) you have to be clear that this can also have costs and when they say yes, that they assume the risk, I think that is what the worker wants". (SR_1. 00:17:47-2).

"… the fear to do things, like emancipating. I don't have problems, yeah, but I think that it's normal, yeah. I have status protection, but they don't" (SI_1:00:39:12-16).

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Nonetheless, being a union leader does not directly mean having greater protection or invulnerability when facing business policies, since the so-called anti-union practices' main targets are union leaders, and they can even include measures such as telephone tapping, which passes over into the field of politics and police surveillance:

"… she, when it became public knowledge that she had taken the role, was fired, I believe. She was fired and they had to rehire her because she was a union leader" (SPR_2. 00:38:15- 18).

"… I think that they kind of boycott the work the unions do … I think it should be different. We would group more sure, or maybe the lack of interest would be so great that the POPULARITY of the unions would drop considerably" (SPR_1.01:28:03-07).

"… the guy had bragged that they had fired 12 people in total, who had tried to create the union, and that if they tried to form one again their fate would be the same" (SE_1:00:09:21-25).

"… I have also noticed that my phone has been tapped, and I know who did it… Those who sit today in the political power … um … then, many times I pause because I also have my own kids and I wouldn't like anything happening to them…" (SI_3.00:32:19-29).

There are also situations of "infiltration" of the unions by workers loyal to their bosses, who upon being offered better working conditions (with greater status) and even though they have the chance to be part of the union, they work as agents for the bosses. But, there is vulnerability in terms of regulating this type of relationship, these are tactically used by the unions to indirectly communicate with the bosses.

"… it is also a bit annoying, because you spend your time like trying to avoid saying things so that the bosses don't know, but me, I think I kind of don't like it… Every time I can, I use the word strike" (SPR_1.01:06:15 – 19).

"… one day some colleagues approached me and said (…) <> (…), comments went from here to there, that this and that and whatever, you know that eventually you end up finding out where things came from, and the supervisor had started the rumor, and he had spread it among the people" (SE_2:00:41:20-35).

"… they just talk, or maybe they have been paid, since many of them were paid and I noticed it, it was… it was unpleasant" (SE_1:00:41:56-5).

In any way, the union status protection constitutes a status level within the union organizations. It separates the "more protected" from the "unprotected" union members, the

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latter of whom then face the punishment system, which sometimes leads to conflict inside the unions themselves.

"… the union leaders think they are untouchable. 'Now I can't get fired, I do what I want", "or I'll do nothing", and there's also the lack of interest from all… maybe the unions haven't achieved much" (SPR_1. 01:18:13-19).

"… in this thing of unionism there are always lies, there are always bad intentions about how people act, so not all you hear is true, there are many things that are lies, so to speak, they'll always try to screw you …" (SE_2.00:41:45-52).

On another note, the union status protection also generates problems in identifying the activity of the union leaders in terms of their efficiency and dedication to the role of leading the union and to the work demands of their own job. In this sense, the interviewees distinguish between "good unionists" and "bad unionists".

"… the thing about the unions has not been clear, or transparent. 'Cos of course, sometimes the union leaders misuse their protection status of their office; or they get here and help with nothing. I think that I am still one of those who arrive here, punch their card and work" (SPR_1.00:42:29-35).

"… I believe that a lack of interest from the people is due to the attitude of the union leaders, I think they have to be closer to the people. Be there… at least a thing of saying 'hey, how are you' or handing out leaflets personally, I think that's the least they can do, feel closer to the people" (SR_4.00:21:34-39).

"You have several types of union leaders. There are those who make a union out of every day. We also do all we can during shifts. Because we think that if you walk away from the basis, or from your job, you also walk away from the reality inside the workplace…" (SP_1.01:27:09-18).

The punishment system inside the workplace is subject to the termination of employment and being unemployed, as a permanent situation of possible aggression from the employer or from the mid-management level (bosses), which leads to a relationship of "fear" between the worker and the employer which also affects the exercising of their rights in the workplace.

"… I cannot believe it because (f), the people are afraid now! I believed we had overcome fear , a long time ago, but when it comes to fighting for their rights the least they want is for the names of the person who made the complaint to be known, 'cos they're scared, 'cos they'll punish you; you understand? because you know how they sanction and punish, the

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bosses, at least I speak from what I see here, ratings, call to order, many times just to bug us and talk about the denial of permits" (SSP_2: 01:12:23-31).

"… it's complicated to talk about a union. One because | … um … the lack of trust of the people due to the fact that they can get fired because (…) they don't know the law. 'cos they don't know the law, they don't know the benefits and disadvantages of being part of the union, so this leads to people not being part of it…" (SP_1.00:02:13-20).

The institutionality that should regulate these practices fulfills the dual role of offering certain guarantees to some union leaders, while for others it makes the lack of trust in the results of the regulation and the inspection of the matter visible. This translates into apathy when facing labor courts and other legal proceedings.

"… that you're gonna present a claim and they start finding thousands of reasons as to why the people fired (f) the people, so then you hear that and you don't feel like reporting anymore, so we presented all those claims outside, we went to court with the lawyers of the corporation and we went to court, and now they are litigating" (SR_4.01:04:04-10).

"… I consider it as serious, that the company includes in its policies providing better working conditions, or better access to credits or benefits, to those who are not part of the union versus those who are. I think it's serious, but today for the labor inspectorate and the authority it is not serious" (SI_2.00:45:32-38).

"… we had already handed in everything with proof during the inspection, even with the smallest details and … but you know, I found a huge wall. Because we had, we had the information, we had everything in terms of saying, you know, this is what's happening, and… the Inspectorate said, <>, we would call them, we talked to the… what do you call them… those from the legal unit and they would also say <>" (SE_1:00:16:20-31).

"… we started the union and they fired a lot of people. Since we filed the report they couldn't fire anyone until after a given number of months. You write the report and they can't fire people. What happened was that the report was about anti-union practices, so there were months where they couldn't fire anyone, and then they would fire again, and we kept on reporting anti-union practices until they started negotiating with some workers…" (SPR_3.01:35:17:30).

At the same time, the system of distribution of the benefits from the bargaining processes also constitutes an demotivating factor for union and trade union affiliation, since these benefits are not shared by workers, affiliated or not to the union/trade union organizations, resulting in conformism, comfort and a sort of expectation on the part of those who are not part of the organizations, but who are also subject to the benefits:

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"… there is a percentage that doesn't affiliate to anything either because they don't believe in the organizations, because they take the easy route of saying, if they're gonna get it anyway, I'll get something, I'm not worried; but when they do have urgent problems, personal problems, then they appear… um … but, in general, no, people don't have the motivation because it doesn't exist". (SSP_1:00:59:07-12).

"… these jerks, they study to screw you, they say that we're going to get them and what happens is that in a certain way they send information from the union down. <> Do you get me? The bonus for everyone is like saying <>" (SI_3.00:19:23-34).

It is also possible to see that one of the responses from the union world concerning the phenomenon of insecurity is qualification and knowledge of the legislation as an important part of the features that an average worker should display (independent of their condition as union leaders), which is displaced as institutional responsibility of the places for professional training:

"… what it means to work through the labor code, what back-up is, what security is, in the public sector what security is and what it means to be a public worker, and that I think should also be taught in the careers themselves, in any area, 'cos any task can be part of the public sector, whether one requiring a technical degree or a professional one…" (SSP_1:00:50:21-5).

It is these same phenomena of knowing the legislation and its loopholes that paradoxically shape practices and organizations. The legislation is trying to move the unions from the lessons of discipline and lack of protection, to formulas that integrate the needs of recognition and defense of the labor rights of the most insecure workers. This is the case of an NGO that brings together union leaders who are interested in protecting outsourced workers who cannot start a union.

"… I always say it and there are always legal loopholes, you can work on the edge of what is illegal, as well as on the edge of what is legal, you can work the half the shop, half your shop can be removed and miss one day, it's not only reason for dismissal, but you can do it…" (SR_3.01:08:19-27).

"… this NGO is for everyone and here they'll have professionals who'll defend their members, at a very low cost, in the case there's litigation, and for free if they need advice on any civil or labor matter; we want it to be a complete organization that not only helps them, we also have social workers in case there are family problems among the workers, due to work-related stress (…), we hope this organization is well received by the union leaders, that this produces a bit of unity" (SR_2.00:20:09-21).

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So, the issue of labor precarity is removed from perspectives and strategies that would challenge the demands from the business world or management, using the existing legal and institutional resources, like the strike and the collective bargaining, which added to the loss of the feeling of "fear" through union activation, while the legislation itself is moving towards faciliting the process of labor precarization.

"… we had the capability of saying, guys, today we work until 8:30, nobody puts in extra hours and we're all leaving; if there's extra work left let the employer solve it, we have no reason to stay; we didn't make it to the end of the shift and we didn't take the left over work, firstly because it wasn't worth it, it wasn't worth it and … and I think that's one of the strategies…" (SI_2.00:15:30-42).

"… when I sat down to negotiate. (…) darn it I was there, so I say, if the licenses are nothing (…), medical licenses, ok. <>, they said. I can send you there <>, they said. <>" (SPR_3.00:26:32-49).

"… they want to do, a sort of, kind of diabolical metamorphosis to the new contracts that arrive, and that's where I explained to you, that within this contract apparently come these allocations more for the professional ones, very obvious what they will give to the others, huge differences between one and the other, so the want to turn the Labor Code into an administrative by-law in order to divide us" (SSP_2.00:44:18-35).

This technical are very common in the precarization process, because is necessary some kind of compromise from workers with the mains of enterprises. So, these little spaces give some possibilities for mobilizing or resistance in a micro-scale against the precarization. But, in the same direction we will see, how the unions conform a logic for just react to this process of insecurity and labor precarity, without develop a more direct and political defense of interest.

9.3.4.- Insecurity and the Predominance of a defensive/reactive Logic

In some unions it is possible to find, due to the predominance, in general, of the phenomenon of job insecurity and because of the historical relations within the union movement, a political position that moves between a corporatist logic and a class logic and which connects to the difficulty of seeing business interests from an informal and dialogical

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perspective. Seen to be more complicated the agreements and the negotiation about security.

"… the bosses have deputies who win people over little by little, and people say 'ok, why are we going to do this if they are so nice, if they're such good people', but in the end, they do nothing for them…" (SPR_1.01:21:15-19).

"… there doesn't have to necessarily be a law, we don't necessarily have to fight, or start a war to formalize things; there are also agreements, we are human beings; the great power a union has is the power of reaching an agreement with the company and these agreements have to be respected…" (SR_3.00:35:42-55).

"… the employers through their managers, assistant managers, HR heads, the supervisors themselves from what I see each and every week, they have them in meetings, indoctrinating them, indoctrinating them, and that same thing is passed on to the workers, and the worker who makes 50 thousand (US 10) bucks more than you, already feels superior to you…" (SI_1.00:41:11-23).

In the same way, the possibilities to articulate the defensive logics related to insecurity are counteracted by the positions than challenge atomization. The lack of knowledge of labor legislation is overcoming by learning in the interrelation with experiences of different union organizations and in the remembering the Chilean union-worker’s history.

"… we had the chance of having lunch at work, with our group, and as we started learning about our rights, as we started learning about other experiences from other unions, from other plants, learning also a bit about the history of the working-class movement (…). We wanted at some point mainly to, we dreamed, we started dreaming that it was possible to change this…" (SI_3:00:09:18-31).

"… I believe in this sense that the road is history, I mean, we have to revisit our story over and over again to find in our history that allows us to move forward, and not just stay in this multiplicity of organizations…" (SP_1.00:19:17-28).

On a related note, union leaderships seem to promote adaptive logics focused on maintaining their hierarchical positions within the union rather than offensively moving forward towards new affiliation strategies or of intervention within the political sphere.

"… from the ‘head honchos’ of the union organization, that is, from the leaders of the current CUT who are now worried about walking, on how to look after their position, rather than defending the workers or on how to encourage unionism more (…), using their positions (…), they, themselves … you cannot have a greater unionism, a greater collective bargaining while having the same people who are always worried about looking after their position". (SR_2.00:16:58:09).

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"… because nobody likes the people that are up there today, who don't want to let go of power and while that doesn't happen, I'm telling you we're still going to carry on, at least in Chile, just walking sideways, with no destination" (SR_4.00:30:08-13).

"… while we don't have serious work with them, with real and serious union leaders who are concerned about working with the workers, and not profiting with the workers and who are not just looking after their lame work positions, their cozy little seat behind their desk, instead of going out to the street to work. As long as we don't have that, there won't be any changes" (SI_1.00:42:19-25).

Even so, there are other examples where job insecurity is not an obstacle in creating unions and for union affiliation. Rather on the contrary, a security circuit is generated in the workplace for their members, which indirectly challenges the aforementioned adaptive logics.

"… they feel protected, because it's been real work, more tangible, 'cos we're paying attention to the issues, we solve issues, not always, I mean also, also there's social work with the people, a solidary type of work, and the solidarity of the workers, but anyway there are different forms of attracting people…" (SR_1.00:38:57-03).

This can be backed up with the experiences in the private sector where young workers play a prominent role in terms of affiliation upon internalizing job insecurity as a latent condition in their work paths, which allows them to leave the disciplinary institutionalization of insecurity and work instability behind.

"… they are bolder and less fearful of joining the union, I mean… there are workers who are just coming in and want to be part of the union immediately…" (SR_1.00:56:40).

"… young workers are just passing through, you know, they are not like the old workers who stayed in the companies for years, because today they know that they step into a company and if they are offered another job, they get the other job; they're not afraid to lose their job as the older workers are" (SM_2. 00:55:12-18).

"… younger guys are not afraid of the company and that's important for us" (SI_2.00:45:13- 15).

While in other areas it can be seen that young people play a role which challenge the union practices, and they generally rather adopt individual strategies related to other work experiences or to social mobility. This distinction is clear in the case of retail companies.

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"… they come with the idea of associating, that if you associate with more people you can achieve vindication within your workplace, that is the mentality, but there are two types as I tell you, the guy who is studying at night or in the afternoon and who is just passing through this job and that you, in their speech, in the way they talk, clearly see that this kid is passing by, versus the young guy who comes with the same mentality of association, that it is better to be part of the union than not to, but that he comes to stay, and that they come to stay in this job or another one in the private sector…" (SR_2:01:28:33-49).

"… Young people today know more about rights and less about (…) union organizations than the older ones. But they are closer to the unions and have a higher inclination to participate in them, those are the young people || because most young people that are inside companies have realized that they can't just carry on being laborers, because nowadays being a laborer is last in the chain …" (SR_3.01:17:54-25).

It is also possible to see that there are strategies which challenge the insecurity situations by converging with social movements. This was the case with the student movement in 2011- 2012. The movement had a set of objectives such as cooperation and solidarity, which led to facing situations of repression and imprisonment, amidst the situation of "lack of solidarity". They develop this imperative like a need for convergence between the organizations about the political and ideological positions each one of them had.

"… we were locked up (laughter), we were locked up for a while with the students, and it wasn't bad, because it was an experience for us, of just learning to let go of fear". (SR_1.00:14:18-3).

"… look, today we have several organizations, several organizations and that somehow this has to do with dignity, it has to do with the, the, the … respect and it has to do with vindication, but I think that in terms of brotherhood we still have a while to go (…), political ideologies of course are valid, but I think that they don't have to be the cornerstone for this brotherhood to overcome…" (SP_2.00:48:43-58).

"… (students) taught us a bunch of things, they gave me documents so that I could know things 'cos socially I have a way of thinking but I didn't know anything about the outsourcing issue, about some laws or about things that had happened to the workers, things, the issue of experience of other unions that showed me things, the actual case of Argentina, the unions in Argentina, things about Europe" (SPR_3.00:50:42-55).

On a related note, there is a diagnosis that identifies student movements with a generational change in Chile, which allegedly constitute a catalyst of union activity. However, the recognition of a generalized new attitude of young people towards participating and organizing in unions is prevented by the inability of the centrality and uniformity of the worker's movement to coordinate alliances and multi-sector demands of the social world.

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"… I believe that if today, in Chile we have, I don't know, 5 thousand union fighters, I believe we have a lot of possibilities of reaching 50 thousand, I hope that's the case and if that is the case, I think that our vindications (…) can move forward more quickly 'cos… 'cos they are going to change, the players and … and that's going to help a lot, I think that's going to help a lot" (SI_1.00:52:10-22).

"… (the lack of) centrality of the union movement likes to be able to connect with other social players as it did in other times… um… as social subjects that called for a demonstration, called to fight a power to be able to do things. For example, I think that these are promoting certain reforms, and on the other hand a lack of unity in the movement because, for example, (…) there are central unions that have been created from CUT everywhere; there are unions that don't, definitively don't want to affiliate to the CUT and don't want to participate in the CUT" (SSP_2.01:07:41-57).

Regardless of this, according to the testimony of several union leaders, insecurity stays as a phenomenon that is overcome by empathic relationships and submission from workers to the employers and management. This kind of adaptation, in the end makes union affiliation and the creation of unions a very difficult task.

"… I think it's normal that people … don't speak out, out of fear, or because of an empathy thing with the managers, with the operations chief, with the bosses. Truth is that I don't care that much … it's kind of weird, but I don't care about being friends with them, or being a friend…" (SF_1: 00:12:41-49).

"… it was very hard, because we were always a few, because there was always the fear that if I join, everybody will know and I'll get fired, so there was always that problem" (SE_1:00:18:42-48).

Nonetheless, insecurity also presents itself as a key element of union activity in terms of being identified with insecure working conditions, and even more so when the latter directly relate to the employment conditions of the workers and outsourcing. A critique of the adaptive logic of the CUT, as contention of the demands that represent direct interests of workers, is also promoted there.

"Just imagine, we work in a health enterprise and we're not even insured. My colleagues don't even have free medical assistance, there's no doctor for the staff, like a first aid post" (SPR_2:00:54:12 – 17).

"… the CUT can do more for the worker if I look at it that way, but the CUT drops out on us; if I were the CUT's president, no, I will not bring up things that have happened because

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of outsourcing. I would stop the country for once and for all, for say ‘outsourcing no more’. We cannot allow that a couple of people profit from our work…" (SPR_3.01:09:11-23).

"… they're not right there in the middle of it all, they're not always fighting or improving, but they are there when conflicts arise (…) because if you are CUT, you're supposed to be creating things, to be creating unions everywhere, to be visiting the unions, to be training them… " (SI_2.00:58:03-20).

In this case, there is no strategic proposal for approaching actors from the professional world, which have a specific profile that may serve as experience and knowledge which unionism needs to have in order to move towards new practices and towards the transformation of the condition of insecurity.

"… the other strategy apart from the … I think that it has to do with generating networks with professionals … um … that may teach, that may give a course, with authority I mean (…) we need to have, as teachers, experts in union movements, in economy … in, in human rights, but also people who have gone through our issue, because in this way we are able to empathize and understand what they are teaching us and what we feel, let's say, reflected on the person who is training us…" (SI_3.00:16:23-45).

"… this is key, in this case that the professors that teach at universities, historians … Because they are also speakers (…) that hopefully nowadays (…) have … moments… um… during the week or the month where they share arm in arm with the outsourced workers, with the dweller, with the sick person who has no medical assistance, etc. I believe that (…) that is also key. I think that they are a great contribution because they allow both the union leader and the worker to be part of them, but we are lacking the spaces to carry out these activities…" (SP_2.00:51:48-09).

Unions are developing a very fast process of knowledge and critical recognition of social and political reality in Chile. This process is in the same direction than others social actors and social movements, of which exist a strong cooperation and exist a tactical alliance for fighting the precarity with more social rights.

9.4.- Insufficiency

The phenomenon of insufficiency is one of the most serious problems that workers and unionism face nowadays. The uneven distribution of wealth in Chile, added to salaries that do not cover the basic needs and a significant underemployment rate, shown a panorama of the difficulties that unions must overcome for respond to the needs of those they represent.

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The centrality of Insufficiency is focused on the flexible nature of benefits and on the difficulties to sustain bargaining models with the employer that allow an actual dialogue between the parties, mainly in matters of salaries. At the same time, insufficiency is understood as a "lack" which means difficulties in setting up union organizations that are up to the task of their operations, as "democratic insufficiency", or as lack of collective control/participation.

Also, insufficiency is regarded as a managerial method of segmentation between "the workers with good job" and "the workers with a bad job", both for the promotion of better conditions concerning to salary, protection and stability. Further, is the promotion of insecure and underpaid working conditions, thereby attempting to prevent any kind of collective identification, and by the same, the existence of unions.

The predominance of insufficiency places the workers at a crossroads, debating between promoting offensive logics which challenge this situation or tacitly accepting the disciplining that the condition of insufficiency maintains. This topic is discussed in the following.

9.4.1.- Insufficiency and Segmentation

In this dimension, phenomena such as the "insufficiency" of the organizational form of the union as well as the difficulties to find the ideal number of members to set up a union are combined. According to encourage the segmentation logic by the companies in the organization of the labor process, the union activity acquires another difficulty.

For example, it is possible to find companies with a large amount of "divisions" or departments that, though subject to the same owner, make association difficult.

"… the company has several divisions, it has a food chemistry division, that I belong to, a civil works direction, industrial works inspection, mining operations, training, certification, but these are distinct divisions" (SM_1.00:07:17-2).

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With regard to the phenomenon of outsourcing and of productive outsourcing, the conditions of the outsourced workers and of their organizations is worse in terms of security, stability and good wage than those of the other workers

"… if the company's unions are doing well, the unions of those outsourced companies are worse, there's nothing clear, what's clear is who actually has the dough and pays for the outsourcing". (SR_1.00:13:14-9).

"… Chilean legislation, which instead of having put an end to outsourcing, created a law to validate it deep down, to make it legal, to legalize it… um… they finished us, because… every outsourced worker in the end is subject to the contract that the outsourced company has with the… with the employer… with the plant company or the main company, and facing this, we couldn't do anything at all…" (SI_3.00:34:43-56).

"… to those of us that are service provision, we get nothing, I mean, up to today they get no bonus, payment for achieving goals, which are bonuses by law do not correspond to them…" (SSP_2.00:10:21-27).

"… we are outsourced, ok and because of being outsourced we are very unprotected in a way, because outsourcing is the worst thing there can be in Chile or the worst there can be as a worker…" (SI_3.00:25:14-23).

Insufficiency becomes more extensive within work spaces, and is being emulated as a "thing to do" by business management, which at the same time makes the affiliation and participation in unions difficult, i.e. by blackmailing and extortion founded upon the same condition as salary insufficiency.

"… it works with a salary of two hundred thousand (USD 361, approx.) in some cases, the rewards which emulates an uncertain salary, plus the bonus for reaching goals and that's what they have… Since its good business, they have taken it to traditional stores as I told you before". (SR_1.00:32:27-8)

"… it was very difficult and in the middle there were several new guard unions, which started up and disappeared, they fired all the people (…), I have fought for their rehiring and the guys prefer to get the money. They're paying them more money, I mean, it's extra bucks anyway and to make it worse they sign a letter stating they're leaving because they decided to" (SE _1.00:24:41-54).

"… the thing about outsourced workers (…) is that it's very little, the impact that we can achieve there, because today the outsourcing has been handled a lot, and there are organizations who have been worried about not create a relationship between a client company and an outsourced one, and the company already knows that they cannot be part of those workers, because today, the law shelters them quite a lot" (SR_3.00:29:32-54).

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The idea of segmentation in this sense is to generate differences between workers within the same workplace (the new and old workers), including different benefits. At the same time, however, the condition of salary insufficiency makes them all equal after all, but in a competitive way.

"… if you remove the premium, which is what today simulates the monthly salary, you realize that the salaries are precarious, they have two hundred thousand (USD 361, approx.) which are taxable, a cashier allocation for the cashier and transportation, and some bucks that are left, 40, 30 thousand, depending on the company, from the productivity bonus. (SR_1. 00:33:31-5)

"…They are people who have been working YEARS, 10 years, 15 years, for the same company, and they have the same salaries as those entering the company TODAY! In fact, they earn much less" (SPR_2: 00:15:31-39).

"… this is in terms of divisions, those who are professionals have wanted to simply be apart from the rest of the officers, or they were separated or they led them to be so, to form a sort of different class…" (SSP_2.00:29:24-32).

The attempts to collectively organize and coordinate the unions, which are dispersed and separated locally due to the structure of the companies and the system of chains/affiliates, represent important points of reference that aim at strengthening the position during bargaining and in other labor conflicts.

"… what I need is for us to meet with all the fellow workers. That's why I am going to try to get to the other malls, Plaza Norte, Las Condes, all the branches that are there, because we need strength to get a collective contract that's good for all of us…" (SPR_2.00:47:46-54).

"… right now, in Estacion Central, I have a spy who helps me distribute the leaflets, I sent him mails, he sends me stuff, and so on…" (SE_2.00:15:23 – 26).

Even so, when dealing, as a single union unit, with this segmented production line, there are still deficiencies pertaining to the coordination between the unionism a way that accommodates the diversity of companies involved in the production or service provision processes.

"… ours intercompany unions are in many companies, and the fact of being in many companies is that sometimes you have to go one by one (companies) and you spend your time doing that, because here they also have problems, maybe smaller, but problems. If you

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have the support of the base leaders of these companies, our job would be much easier" (SR_2:00:04:43-51).

These coordination problems make more difficult the work for union’s leaders. The problem of trusting and team work put a new challenge for unions in order to face the labor precarity.

9.4.2.- Insufficiency and Atomization

The responses to an individualization system of the working conditions and the losses of solidarity detected in the world of work were diverse. First, the insufficiency conditions at work were related to atomization, as part of a structural change process in the 1970's. This diagnostic is repeated for many union’s leaders, while the nostalgia seems a response very strong in accordance to “the lost” of better conditions:

"… in the 70's I have… everything changed, let's say, the social setup… um… and they made us feel no longer like workers, but like (…) we were all rated as middle class, they made us class aware (…) it's like being diminished, they made us lose that… those identities, and they brought us to a foreign system where we lost, let's say, the basic traditions of Chilean society; I believe that it is the system, I believe that it rules us, they brought us into it, I don't know". (SM_1.00:39:49-58).

There is also an accountability of dominating class' activity in the dictatorship as one of the pillars of the atomization exercise. Also exists an discourse about the origin of work insecurity and insufficiency conditions that is related to the restructuring. This discourse is focused on the practices of atomization and managerial management, which would echo in the contemporary labor culture.

"… they were, they are the ones that destroyed it all. All that tapestry that had been built, the system, let's say that… that rules us" (ET_1. 00:57:28-32).

"… 70% of the heads of security, they were all former military people and 30% of the managers were military people, all retired. Imagine coming out (…) from a time where we were (…) where we had military repression. What mentality did those managers bring with them? It's hard to change the way they think, they are still military men and they'll die being so, and the workers, and the workers weren't considered people either, but for them the workers were subordinates…" (SR_3.00:04:03-19).

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"… the unions, the media in general were like hidden, very far away, I mean, there was a sort of… of clandestineness in that sense; after the so-called democracy came back to it all, trade unions started to appear again but the difference was that the mentality was practically another because we also saw a lot of divisions…" (SSP_2.01:32-54).

The role of insufficiency is also dynamic by guaranteeing an atomization and individualization that is more dependent on flexible benefits than on recovering generalized welfare conditions, which is tangible in the business strategies to discourage union affiliation.

"… they are like a bit, it's like that they are bit dissociated, things are like dissociated, I mean, they are more worried about the bonus, about what my salary readjustment will be, and they don't care about the main issues; ok, that's alright… but let's think, what do I want more bonuses for, what do I want a better salary readjustment for" (SM_1:00:54:26-30).

"… today, those that receive higher bonuses (…) are the non-unionized workers, so that's an incentive because the workers are free to affiliate or disaffiliate whenever they want, so if they see a substantial salary difference with the non-unionized worker, they say damn, and they leave! (SR_2.00:51:22-34).

What we see are individual strategies to tackle insufficiency, at least more so than the formation of a collective, which makes the collective activity of unionism difficult. Even so, trade unions such as from the health and retail sectors try to diversify their ways of motivating the participation of workers in their structures, but the answer is still oriented towards immediate economic achievements, despite the intention of the union leaders

"… it is very hard for the people to go to meetings, so now what we did is that we changed the strategy and we copied a bit from the political system, almost going door to door; we go to the services, we hold meetings that are smaller but we still call assemblies but… um… that's missing, that people commit, attend; but if you host a meeting where you live and you say that you'll inform them because they are going to get paid something, then they all show up…" (SSP_1. 01:03:36-2).

"… what is it that the workers should be thinking of as motivation to be part of the union? <>. If all the workers thought that, they would all be part of the union, of all the unions!, but the workers don't. The workers say <>. Sadly, after recognizing this reality we have had to look for benefits, outside benefits, like entering the neoliberal system in terms of… um… the debt of the workers, of giving them a chance of getting credit, food they can buy, clothes they can buy, clothes for their children, I don't know, medical attention, and that is getting into the neoliberal system, you know, but if this is not your

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objective today, then the affiliation to unions would be even lower, a lot lower…" (SR_2.01:01:06-19).

Salary insufficiency, understood in the sense of forced individualization through strategies that push workers to look for additional (part-time) employment, does not necessarily mean a lack of union activity on the ground. In the case of two of the union leaders interviewed, it can be seen that insufficiency and the forms of underemployment do not prevent them from assuming positions of organizers and union leaders, although it does imply a new problem for the role and the responsibilities that union leadership involves.

"… if I want in two places. Because I don't… well, I cannot say ‘I HAVE TO!!’ because I cannot pay for the school transportation for my kid this month, because I don't have it, I CAN'T, you know. If I also have to go out and work, I have a child to raise, a house to pay, then I can't say I don't have it" (SPR_2.00:58:14 – 19).

"… we don't have decent salaries. What is the minimum wage again? 182 thousand pesos (U$ 284)? Tell me, who lives with a salary of 182 thousand pesos? No-one. Most people have one or two jobs. In my case I work and so does my wife, we have to share the housework and many times (…) we have to turn to family so they can look after the kids …” (SR_3.00:23:06-21).

Salary insufficiency has become a critical situation for the construction of workers' professional biographies, which makes it one of the main problems which union action must confront nowadays.

"… I started working as a security guard and I realized that this whole thing was really shit, I started looking at the business world and I realized that, that it's really hard (softly cries), I knew what it was like to be hungry, I knew what it was like to miss your house, I knew what it was like to be afraid and I started looking at the world in such a traumatic way …” (SE_1.01:20:45-53).

"… if there is something that money has taught me, it is to learn to hate it, 'cos damn I hate money! If there is one thing I hate, it's money, why, you ask? Because it makes me want it, 'cos I need it, that's why I hate it so much, 'cos I already need it so much. I mean, with no money I do nothing, with no money I don't pay the phone, with no money I can't make it here, with no money I can't get dressed. With no money I do nothing, that's why I hate it so much because it's so dirty (SI_3.00:45:03-16).

"… I don't have a fair salary, and apart from that capitalism consumes me, and it consumes my son and it's always shit …” (SP_1.00:19:10-14).

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Despite this critical situation, several union leaders denounced a certain "false identity" of the workers, allegedly founded on the superficial image of a successful and consumerist life. Against this tendency, they put forward the idea of a certain precarious, territorial and classist identity.

The salary plays a central role in the configuration of this new union’s identities, and is an impulse for demands and claims for workers in the labor conflict and collective activity. The money importance in a high commodified society is central for understand the proximity into the wage insufficiency and the collective protest.

"… breaking the fact of pretending, acknowledging that we are laborers and that we've been outsourced that… no matter if your are with more studies, or with less studies, we're under the same system of precarious salary, with jobs that are also insecure, and feeling it, identifying with it; I think that when you start identifying with something and you feel this identity, this identity breaks everything, even your political tendencies…" (SI_3.00:38:27- 41).

"… when they hit people's pockets, when it is about money and all, that's when they go out and protest, otherwise they don't greatly protest, (…) I think that the one that benefits most from this strategy is the government, actually because (…) brings a way to maintain the divisions…” (SSP_2.00:25:38-59).

"… I believe that that is the line, now doing it regionally or like north, south, center or as outsourced, or retail, I don't quite understand it all yet, but I think that it is the first step. First, to identify with a program and move this program forward because it represents us, with our reality without… without decorations, but just the raw reality we face every day…" (SP_2.00:28:09-21).

This identity is associated with a complex articulation between the currents of insecurity, but especially with the nature of insufficiency, since the social rights system is monetarized, which responds to a combination of precarious work, social insecurity and social exclusion.

"… (identity) is precarious, I mean … (…) I live my life with insecurity, though I work myself to death, but I'm not only saying it for me, maybe, with the work I do I have enough to cover my monthly expenses, but I'm also saying it for my family, for my brother, my cousin, my niece, my mother, my grandmother, my family is on this side of the … the … how do you call that line, when they say the poverty line or middle class? No, we are below that …” (SI_2.00:35:37-51).

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"… we live at that level of insecurity and indecency, to that level of need, you get me, we have no right to education, no right to medical care, no right to a decent job and that's not because we are bad people, it's not because we have criminal records, it's not because we are lazy (…), but we don't even have the tools, we don't have the opportunities, we don't have the conditions, so… um… this has become more serious, you do a lot of … (||), um… (||), you see this part is painful, man… (cries)" (SI_3.00:41:03-28).

In the same way, It is interesting how the union leaders do not identify with the middle class. This status does not correspond to their reality and work. On the contrary, the ideas of injustice, indecency, insecurity, etc., are more central in their discourse about identity, personal biographies, family and their experience in the trade unions world.

9.4.3.- Insufficiency and the Vertical Organizational Logic

Exporting work models, productive models and working conditions in the context of insufficiency and precarity constitutes a focus that can be turned into a problem by the experience of the public health trade union. The government in Chile uses this logic for transform the public sector with a “modernization” of public services.

The modernization, in the public health sector, was a reform for make more efficient and productive the function, management and process in the entire sector, but nevertheless, these reforms had an import impact in the unions. Before the split of the Health Workers Confederation in 2002, the reform proposals from the government were submitted to an agreement:

"… There was an agreement to subject the reform to a referendum and what were we the workers going to say whether we would agree to the terms that came in it, because for us everything that has happened had been foreseen. We said so but our national leadership was never heard, the leadership of CONFENAT had one problem because this didn't come either with human resources or with economical resources, but it was an administrative issue. So then we just pulled a cover over it, we left; they didn't listen to us and then this split occurs, so from that minute it was hard for us (p) to rebuild our union” (SSP_1.00:06:34-6).

The promotion of an insufficiency model (concerning to human and economic resources for unions) meant a critical break within the union leaderships, which in the end disarticulated and fragmented the organization. The lack of more democratic organizations, the

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difficulties for participation in the unions, and the closeness into political parties and unions leaders, create a complex scenario which discourages a strengthening of trade unionism

"… neither for money nor dignity, there's no proposal. And the proposals from the CUT are so vague …” (SR_4:00:29:43-46).

"…we came together as a union, we arrived at the CUT and you realized that the CUT is more worried about the problems that the parties they belong to have, more than about the workers themselves; but they give you the politically correct talk, that whenever you want to come <>, but from there to actually giving you concrete support, of telling you <>, there's nothing of that…” (SI_1.00:45:32-52).

The organizations are still marked by insufficiency in terms of democratization. The VOL generates a complex network of red tape dynamics that stands in the way of a new unionism and that actually erode the more biggest organizations, like central unions (which groups together several confederations), confederations (which groups together several federations), and federations (which groups together several unions).

In Chile, like we revised, the most important Central Unions is the CUT, and she can´t not escape from these problems in turn to insufficiency, democratization and fragmentation.

"… they have many paper organizations, which have not been democratized, starting from their election system, 'cos they have weighted votes; I believe that our organizations are one of the few, or maybe the only one that votes vote by vote and democratically, I mean that one vote equals one vote, to vote in any circumstance, not the votes that I represent, which could be 100 or 200 that I have. The CUT has unions on paper that don't even exist anymore, but yeah, they say they represent 1000 people so 4 years ago, when the idea was to democratize this, well, Arturo Martinez opposed it and it almost led to, they all thought he was going to have a heart attack because he was jumping and screaming that he did not want this, this one vote, one person” (SSP_1:00:55:06-18).

"… the union leaders that are inside the CUT have no base, they have no members that support them, I mean today, there are possible unions, those of the sectors, where you pay the inscription installments for members that don't exist; I don't have a thousand members, here are my installments, ok let's see, no, you see here they are. These are one thousand members” (SF_2. 00:43:05-0).

"… the thing about the CUT, is that they still have the old leaders, the dictators, those who make the decisions. Now we are a… a different type of people, who certainly pursue their ideals, and tries to accommodate. But about credibility, I think they feel direct guilt, about the elections, the use of resources, the management of the union offices, they make

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people… stop believing them any longer, because they don't trust them” (SPR_1.01:34:29- 39).

"… sadly, the CUT isn't very representative anyhow, I mean, first because their election systems are not democratic, they are not democratic, they're fake. For me that was a huge let-down when I found out, I thought that, I had the right to issue one vote and no, I don't have the right to vote for anyone …” (SI_3.01:13:51-03).

Faced with the idea of belonging to bigger organizations, and being aware of the adverse and anti-democratic conditions in this type of organization, the strategy of many unions starts by redefining their efforts, focusing on mid-size organizations that allow accessing a more direct participation. The incorporation to these new structures is accompanied by the ideas about creating parallel central unions, such as those that have been created in Chile since 2003, with new bylaws, based on union democracy and universal voting.

“…| they haven't got a clue about an assembly (…), they have no members, so there is a huge issue there you know, we were given the guarantees, we thought, and we always thought of being a part of it, of being a part of the CUT, but when we become a massive federation, big, where we don't have a right to an opinion or a vote and where we cannot make changes, but where instead we are merely a union, where you go there? and you are one more number and you are right there, then it's impossible” (SR_2.00:43:48-8).

"… then I'll be interested for the next (election), because then I think we will have a much more advanced work and there (…) we'll realize if it's worth it to carry on with this same CUT or we simply have to change, that we have to form another central union…um… one that represents the workers and where you are able to choose, where you are able to give an opinion, where you can actually participate, because, if you don't have those elements, you are not… you are never going to be represented” (SI_1.00:54:20-35).

"… universal vote. Because, that's what was done the other time. First you do the weighted one which will last for a given number of months. To make the constitution, you use the weighted one. But later, within our statute, it says there that our election must be universal …” (SSP_3.01:29:31-43).

This phenomenon clearly means the dismantling of the unitary project that had driven the CUT forward in the 1960s and 1970s. That is expressed in the different union’s currents and tendencies that find the conditions for representation and participation lacking in the high level range in trade unions.

When the CUT stops to being a point of reference inside unionism, the formation of profession-specific unions start to emerge with the crisis of CUT’s project. On the other

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hand, this process is part of new ways of solidarity and advice among the workers, with more political and radical unions, and the recrudescence of differences between the diverse political tendencies within unionism.

Some of these differences are located in the problem of “lack of trust”, justified or not, between the union leaders themselves. This lack of trust is related to the "consultancy" actions and to the disloyal practices of some leaders of the union movement. Here are very relevant the perceptions about the political options and choices tacked by unions leaders and the bigger organizations, which are mediated by bureaucratic and institutional channels, the government and the political power, because again they are part of a critique of the VOL.

"… the same music plays everywhere, they are all offering you help but every time they need something in return (…), when you are a new union and you don't know that much about the subject, they screw you and you don't even notice. Because there are things they can get just like that (…) that if you could only ask a bit more you would realize there are things you can achieve on your own, but because of the knowledge issue there are people that take advantage…” (SE_1.01:02:30-45).

"you have to go to a lawyer and that's money (…) of course you go (…) you ask them and they'll answer the same thing everywhere, with no money you do nothing unless you're smart and you start reading and you take the time to read” (SI_2.01:23:37-51).

"… the people from the federation tell me: <>, but then time goes by because when things are heated there's always a lack of trust about the things they tell you, right, or they are talking behind your back saying <>. When we negotiated they thought that I was going to get the money. They realized I wasn't. It was someone else who was rowing the other way. What happens with that? What happens is that people don't trust the leadership, but when they see that the thing is legal, that the people who lead the union are reliable and trustworthy people, then the rest join in with no problem …” (SI_3.00:48:20-39).

The consequences of this vertical organizational logic (VOL) finally lead, in the case of insufficiency, to a weakening of the organization and negotiation bases that could be more representative of the worker's world and with the due strengthening of their main organizations. This debt is translates into a loss of union credibility and legitimacy that pushes towards atomization and union dispersion, which leaves the organizations in difficult negotiation situations and with the need for changes in the structure of the organization.

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"… this has a great impact, a great impact towards the demands that the workers in general want, because this leaves us way below if there isn't a good organization, if there isn't a strong organization to go with this, then they will never be able to make enough pressure on it (…) is not get 100% of the demand, maybe you get 50%... um… an important percentage?? …” (SSP_2.01:12:46-03).

""… (changing) the top structure, the head in this sense, those who are… leading, they should pick this up and organizing it and have it there, and (…) they need it. Say ‘hey, let's make a good mold’ out of it?? …” (SF_2.01:30:21-28).

These perceptions seem to be close from a duality: the continued expectation from union leaders about the role of bigger organizations and a critical discourse about the function of the same organizations and his leaders. Those ways of see the scenario of unions shows a map of contradictions and divergences into the union’s strategies and discourses.

9.4.4.- Insufficiency and Disciplinary Institutionalization

In the case of the younger union leaders, as is the case with SPR_1, the example of their relationship with the institutionalization, like a disciplinary process, helps to recognize one of the ways of identification with legal system and the dependence on the regulations, institutions and its process.

"… We got information at the Labor Inspectorate, I … I am pretty close to them. Quite close. Thank god for that because I think they like me (laughter). What's certain is that they have been adopting me a bit, because I don't know, I go there every week, for every doubt I have I go to them” (SSP_1: 00:04:16-19).

The workers with greater union experience talk about a "vicious circle" in the dependence from the inspection institutions and of “labor defenders”, labor court with prosecutors and lawyers for helping workers and unions defense.

This vicious circle is a complicated process where there is no modification of the business practices. It actually requires the union and the practice of the union leaders to having a constant communication with the government and his apparatus, without having certainty about definitive results.

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"… you go back to the labor inspectorate, and in the end it turns into a vicious cycle which doesn't move forward at all. But they (the inspectorate) momentarily solve the problems, and the abuse continues, the non-payment of salaries continues, etc., and in the labor inspectorate they tell you that they cannot go out anymore, rather monitor and you have to go to the court, and there you have to have money to hire a … lawyer, because the labor legal counsel won't give you any support either …” (SE_2.00:25:23-35).

"… they turn into people that go to, go to work and then the members arrive, they tell them this is happening, they go to the labor inspectorate, and at the labor inspectorate they tell them this is what you have to do, then they do it and it turns into a routine, there is no advance …” (SI_3.00:29:32-41).

The problem of institutionalization of a weak collective bargaining and a limited right to strike leads to the same legislation containing a disciplinary nature, that appears as insufficient to generate union action guidelines and a strong pressure tool, because presented more "risk" than benefits, so it can imply the dismissal and social disaffiliation of the employees.

"… the unions have, um… the chance of presenting a set of demands to the employer but not to negotiate, because, to negotiate the employer will have to be scared (…)” (SR_2:00.42:48-54).

“…reality is that… they replace you, they don't pay your salary, after 3 days you say <>. Since there was no negotiation the workers take protection on (the article) 369, and what do you have left, staying as you were, so, where's the negotiation? It's a forced negotiation (…)” (SF_2:00:32:11-22).

This is exacerbated in the case of intercompany unions, where collective bargaining depends on the will of the employer to negotiate, making the possibilities of negotiating the work conditions, salaries, etc., difficult, especially for a sector of the workers with high levels of outsourcing.

"… today there is the possibility that the workers present a list of demands to the employer, but this is not collective bargaining, because you present it to the employer and the employer can say no to all of them, but in collective bargaining they can't, they unions should have means of pressure (…)” (SR_2.00:42:08-14).

"… generally outsourced workers belong to intercompany unions and by law, intercompany unions are forbidden to negotiate (…)” (SF_2.00:43:12-15).

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Despite this there seems to be a tactical adaptability and a generation of expectations, shown by some unions, especially in retail, when facing the problems of institutional weakness and the restricted duration, legal in nature, of the strike:

"… the break comes on day 15; most of the strikes you do start on the 4th, 5th or the 6th, or after two weeks, I mean, you've scheduled it for the 15th, then what we do, is that we gather money to live with from the fifteenth to the 30th, I mean, we have one month that we can hold out outside the company, and that for us becomes a negotiating card, the bottom of the strike, the company knows we have the economic capacity of carrying out a strike, 'cos the workers provide the resources to do it” (SR_1.00:12:49-4).

"… Look, I'll be honest. This happened because of the ignorance of the employers; we presented them with the demands, like a collective bargaining of a company union (…) the worst that could have happened to us was to receive a no, and it happened with one company, that happened because of the lack of knowledge of their own lawyers …” (SR_2.00:49:33-48).

"… if you are a good leader, a good leader has to know how to play, play cards and play chess (…), many times that's not good, to hit the company… um… with the full force of the law, you always have to have your aces up your sleeves, or pieces put away, that can be useful at some point so that you can… look, it's going to come out wrong, blackmail the company, but blackmail them in the good sense of the word, holding the law in your hand …” (SR_3.00:39-40:22).

It is possible to see that the flexible benefits given by the companies constitute a focus of conflict for many unions in terms of fighting for flexible salaries rather than for stable salaries. These ways of payment make more insecure and uncertain the workers’ behavior and making more precarious the salaries.

"… the concept of production bonus changed to a fixed bonus, so this production bonus, just for say something, this production bonus before meant a high percentage of your base salary, and today it gives you 50 thousand pesos, and that's your whole production bonus, so, that is the thing with profits and bonuses; there we lost a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot” (ES_1.00:20:43).

"… the worker was doing well in sales, not today, they use achievement of goals, and per group they reduced commissions to zero point zero and something, in that sense and achievement of goals, whether for sale of all the stock, sale of equipment, unknown client, good customer service, etc. (...) today the salaries are becoming a lot worse in these stores”. (SR_1.00:30:21-5).

This system of flexible benefits and the attitude of the workers in terms of identification with salary insufficiency permeate and mold the field of collective bargaining for the

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unions, by generating expectations based on indirect benefit systems that do not always address the matter of salary but that rather act as complements.

"… in the meetings I said <

"I'm not carrying the project with me right now, I would have loved to show it to you, but let me remind you that with this project I have some wedding bonuses, mortuary bonuses… because our thing is quite easy, I have the experience of a colleague that was run over by a car and the company wasn't part of it at all, (…), then I thought about putting all this, I thought about putting several details like this (SE_2.01:12:35-47).

"… we got bonuses, we created bonuses for attendance and punctuality in the company which started at 30 thousand pesos (US$ 55 approx.). What does this mean? That upon punching your card on time when you come in and on punching your card on the way out for the 30 days of the month, you receive 30 thousand pesos, and where's that paid? If your work contract and labor law state that the main requirement of the worker is to fulfill their time schedule, and then you should receive a bonus” (SR_3.00:19:03-18).

The characteristics that insufficiency presents in relation to the negotiation processes and their institutionalization are linked to the closure that setup the regulatory framework, as is the case with the negotiable benefits and salaries, which constitute elements that the unions know how to incorporate as a way of reversing the tendencies towards labor precarity.

"… your second negotiation cannot be less than that, which is what we did, drastically increasing the amount of the bonus made it less feasible for the company to allow it, which means that if it was already at 40 thousand pesos (US$ 20 approx.), 37 thousand pesos (US$14 approx.), bringing it up to 60 thousand (US$30 approx.), they weren't going to like it, and we would never win that fight, so, what did we do? We got sure that those bonuses went above 40 thousand pesos (US$ 20 approx.) but the clause that was tied to this bonus was say that if you had won it before signing the collective contract for the second one, the second collective contract three months ago, this automatically became part of your base salary (…), so most of us of the workers that have a base salary, our base salary is already above 220000 pesos (US$440)” (SR_3.01:29:13-34).

The problem of (salary) insufficiency is accompanied by this logic of defending salary rights that have previously been won before. When these become threatened, then precarity is recognized as institutionalized in the union's activity. The predominance of a "flexible subject" in the negotiation processes, which puts unionism concern about the productivity

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and production models of the company itself, as well about the levels of specialization and remunerations in terms of salary insufficiency, gives a new idea about the repertories and the agenda develop by unions in a more classical business logic.

"… people are a bit more reluctant to do things, because even if they work hard there is a fixed bonus; before, this was a bonus, let's say, more progressive in a way; there was a relation between your effort, harder work, 'cos in theory there will be, and there was a… a greater reward, let's say, for that hard work, for that effort, and this has been lost now…” (SM_1.00:22: 41-6).

"… young people are more aware maybe with respect to unionism, about what their rights are, because they have been screwed, in one way or another by the company, since it was these companies who gave their parents their salary, and those salaries were precarious, they understand that in order to move forward and study, they have to work …” (SR_3.01:21:20-32).

Nonetheless, the possibilities seen with this direction, to break with the disciplinary nature, strategically involve the conditions of insecurity and work flexibility as horizons of union discourse. This is greatly expressed in the promotion of association and convergence among workers of small companies (service providers and outsourcing enterprises) and large companies (production and service hirers).

"… facing the negotiation of 2004 with support, with everything the CTC means, with everything that has been won, with all the military symbols (marches, parade, discipline, etc.)… then the company will feel the pressure, and, and I think that we have, we have to make them feel it like that” (SM_2.00:23:43-6).

"… I know that the CTC, let's say, was created, let's say, thinking under a fabric, safeguarding the interests of the worker that is related with large scale mining, (…) I think that when we see this, this case of negotiation, … um… the, the CTC will give us their support whether we have a part, let's say, a fraction of the union that provides services with the aquiculture area, as you say, or not; but, but there is always the thing, the main thing will be to support, let's say, all the union …” (SM_1.00: 33: 50-1).

Not only the members of the unions are persecuted and threatened to keep them from participating in union organizations, but even the union leaders are subject to discipline, surveillance and punishment when setting up a union. The fear constitutes a very important element in decision and actions of unions’ members.

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"… the day after (having setup the union), I worried that I may get fired, I didn't tell my wife either (laughter), I wanted to go on medical leave, anything, and it was a very difficult decision” (SR_1.00:06:30-37).

The difficulty of carrying these deficiencies and abuses to the arena of public debate through the media and information is mainly based on the little interest shown by the media in matters related to the union reality and in giving a platform for the voice of the unions and their problems. In the same way the public sphere constitute a shelter for building legitimacy and support for trade union repertoires.

"… here the press is manipulated, you know! It's very hard for the press to get to the places where we are holding press conferences, where we report things. Normally it's radio Bio Bio, radios from different places where there are slums. But, the PRESS? The press… no, it has to be something truly extraordinary for the press to turn up (pp)” (SSP_3:00:29:05-19).

On another note, it is possible to see the need for unions in building a “new public profile” referent to the union leader in contexts of labor precarity, with the concept of “dignity” and “respect”. This new profile is generate according to promote a "new discourse" about work dignity and labor rights. This profile and discourse are seeking for validation in the civil society and the public sphere, like a source of engagement, networks and social power.

"… to face, let's say… the times we're living, of course yes, 'cos as I was saying, having more prepared leaders, more involved in all the areas, with broad contact networks …” (AR_1.00.42:46-50).

"…today you don't only gain money in a strike, there's no need to lie to the workers. You cannot tell the workers: you know? We're going to go on strike because our salaries are going to improve, that's a lie; you have to tell the fellow workers, we are going on strike because we need dignity, so that they see the company we're in and we can fight, it doesn't matter that we don't do well, but the company will respect us, they will fear us, and that's the most valuable thing for the next negotiation” (SR_1:00:12:49-58).

"… we are going to get dignity for the worker, we'll start with dignity and we'll finish by getting the compensations that the worker is entitled to, in case of being fired or in case of a violation of their fundamental rights, for which today the company can be sued under the valid labor legislation” (SR_2.00:08:32-41).

"… the unions here in the country, I think, are being setup starting from and based on a need; in the company I'm working at I… well, this is not respected, well, up until a couple of months ago, people were not respected …” (SE_1:00:03:01-07).

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This profile can be juxtaposed to the perceptions that one interviewee mention about gender view and the problems with her peers in the health trade union organizations, or of the difficulties some leaders have in terms of preserving legitimacy among their base when trying to make union-representation tasks and their work tasks compatible:

"… we're all women, so you know the look we get from some, because the leaders of the counterpart are all men, so the look we get is because for years the leadership or unionism itself was considered a man thing, and it's been hard for us women to take over these spaces (…)” (SSP_1.00:07:01-11).

"… you have several types of leaders. There are leaders that make every day a trade union day. We also try to do more than we can per shift. Because we think that if you move away from the base, or from your job, you also move away from the reality present in the services …” (SP_1.01:27:09-18).

Chauvinism in union activity clearly seems to exist. It may be interpreted as an "insufficiency" in terms of responding to a model spinning towards the feminization of work, and articulate as a consequence of this model entails its own gender concept, with a particular focus on problems of sub-employment or salary insufficiency. That was we can get like results especially in the interviews in the private health sector:

"… A lot more difficult, a lot more valuable, I think is to go out looking for it, I believe it's a very female characteristic, because they're a bit tougher, a bit more warrior like. Even if it sounds wrong (laughter), I think I'm quite the warrior" (SPR_1:01:42:26-30).

"… most of us in our union, most were women, most were women and women are much more of fighters than men, 'cos men drop out immediately, but not women, women fight and that was a good thing that I only had women” (SPR_3.00:55:14-25).

Salary insufficiency also accompanies serious debt problems for the workers, which also turns into a difficulty for the autonomy of the workers for participating in union workers, because of this "fear" of being punished or being fired and its affect on their payment capacity.

"… we are all over-indebted! ALL OF US! I think that, that… I think that in order to have one thing it's necessary to take on debts… 'cos paying cash IT'S IMPOSSIBLE. And sadly we already have one card, and you max it out! (laughter) but, I think this is hard for all of us” (SPR_1.01:39:07-12).

"… they get loans, those well-known cash-in-advance, that are now the boom in department stores, I think we couldn't live without them (laughter), the famous visa card, that the banks

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go around distributing insanely, and you become over-indebted and you're done for, you know, it's like signing a pact with the devil!” (SF_2.00:24:32-39).

"… I think that they're not killing themselves anymore, I think they endure more. >>hell no, look at the somber looks I got from the boss, but no, I have to keep on working<< or >>no, no it's not important that I'm standing here eating on the corner, that doesn't matter 'cos I have a job<<, I think that they just endure more (SPR_2.01:21:20-31).

"… but we all live indebted, because the salary we earn today as workers is very precarious" (SI_1:01:14:12-15).

Anyway, the disciplinary institutionality and the insufficiency become problematic with respect to "new forms of organization" which involve a negative-critical view of the political parties and also a new understanding of working in the political scenario. The “work” begins to be politicized by critical discourses that understand the engagement between employers, entrepreneurs and political coalitions. The response is new repertories of organization.

"… the tendency maybe is to do without the parties and perhaps organize through the neighborhood councils or through union councils and student federations” (SI_1:01:04:15- 17).

"… we are in a great cosmos, we're all important but the workers are even more so; with no workers there are no companies and that is something we have to be clear about, 'cos if we don't understand this logic we'll never leave the place where we are; today we have many, there are many networks where we can achieve contact with many people …” (SR_3.01:06:20-32).

"… for example, I believed in (Ricardo) Lagos, (…) and I voted for all of them, both for representatives and as senators who were from the Concertacion so they could move the project forward. And in the end, nothing, (…) we're still in the same reality and in the end it hurts you, (…), you still have hopes in politicians. Then we have to forget about politicians, we have to make our own politics …” (SI_1.00:41:22-39).

This discourse and this new ways of organization are accompanied by a critique to the bureaucratic institutionalization of the union organization. This discourse improves the necessity for unitary leaderships, for democratic forms of participation in the union activity, and a change of the legislation related to of union affiliation, especially in the automatic affiliation.

"… there are decisive factors missing, in the sense of leadership, so to speak, that can lead to these things (reforms), (…) 'cos first, the first thing they have to do is to be all focused on

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the same road, not strewn around, each of them thinking I want to do this, I want to do that …” (SSP_2.01:17:17-32).

"… it should be legally stipulated that, by law, everyone should be incorporated into a union because that's how it should be, for the issue not to order to not be individualized and for it not to be between the company and each single one of the workers…” (SF_2.01:35:05-16).

"… if it were compulsory (automatic) for everybody to be part of a union, things would be different. If laws changed, if the strike was canceled by the worker, the issue would change profoundly because the company, two days into it, will see that they are losing a lot of money (…), because they have to pay the worker and because they're not selling. The thing would change in a whiff, they would be no strikes. Strikes would last very little. So the mediation there would stop the negotiation. Making this change (automatic affiliation), and that legal strikes were paid. (SI_2.00:45:31-57).

Indirectly, bureaucratic institutionalization is articulated with the salary insufficiency in terms of collective bargaining. This relation is sensed by the trade unions members. This situation generates a discouraging effect in union activity and a loss of credibility for their organizations:

"…we don't believe anymore because of what the CUT has been like in the latest negotiations of the public sector where we started negotiating very well and in the end you end up negotiating many times below expectations, and we haven't like that and in fact it looks like things are fixed beforehand, let's say, in some cases, that's why in the end CONFENAT pulled out of these negotiations, what for? Why are we going to go there and be worn out?” (SSP_1.00:57:15-4).

"… the issue of the unions, always becomes a political thing, always. But I think that they, the image that they've used, they have overused it too much” (SPR_1.01:41:09-13).

At the same time it is possible to identify an economic insufficiency of the unions, which makes it impossible to have a budget that allows for their independence, organizational strengthening and the possibility of hiring support services, such as consultancy for the union activity and the legal and institutional defense of their claims.

"… today we have unions of 200, 300 workers, which are poor unions!, poor, they can barely pay the union hours of their leaders, because the company doesn't pay them for that, so with that level of unionism, we cannot opt to have a lawyer, because we're not going to pay a lawyer if we have 200, 300 unions with more than 25 workers, how on earth are we going to pay a lawyer to be there?” (SR_2:00:06:19-28).

In the same way, we have the appearance of the institutional definition of "vulnerable worker", which is criticized from the union leadership as this type of worker benefits in

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labor legal counsels and labor courts, things that the unions or workers that do not fit this profile do not have.

"… what are the criteria that they use to consider whether he or she is vulnerable or not, well, those that don't have the chance of joining the union probably, those that don't have a socio-economic characterization survey, or a social protection form with under 5000 points, in the end instead of being a support it's more of an obstacle, and you end up discouraged …” (SI_3.00:31:14-26).

This situation is finally part of the dependence between unions, labor institutionality and the expectations/needs that involve defending labor rights in the legal field nowadays. This situation shows the paradoxical relationship that exists into the "vicious circle" of the legal and bureaucratic plot, which mediates the labor conflict in Chile.

9.5.- Working Conditions

In this analysis, working conditions are considered as the practices that involve the health, well-being and job quality under which the workers work. Here it is also possible to include the impact of employment, or its localization in nearby communities, in the worker's relationship with employers, with the nuclear family, with clients, suppliers, other people and, why not, the social movements.

In our sample there is a multiplicity of working conditions because our interviewees come from different productive and territorial sectors, as well as from different occupations and with varying qualifications. The results show that the working conditions, especially in the industrial and mining sectors, are part of the difficulties that unionism faces, when facing a business labor culture that is not concerned about or does not conceive the safety and well- being of the conditions of the job itself important.

At the same time, besides being associated with a diversification of the forms of employment, the working conditions it is also conceive to a diversification of the types of workers. This represents a significant challenge for the union organizations of the sense of giving room to the representation of diverse expressions of the working world.

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This situation is the one that stands out the most in this analysis, since it shows the difficulties of designing unionism's strategies and tactics, a process which can arrive at an advance towards the converging in one representative organization, integrated and democratic, setting precarious work as the main focus.

9.5.1. Working Conditions and Productive Heterogeneity

In some many cases, the working conditions are determined by production chain processes that turn into increasingly more centralized processes

"… now there's one lab, almost everything is centralized in Santiago because, for example, what Puerto Montt is now is like liaison offices, you do the sample per one hundred of salmons, this is packed and one part is sent, one part is still done in Talcahuano, and the rest all goes to Santiago, and in the north it's the same. They are very precise analyses; the most specific and sophisticated ones are done here in Santiago, so What the company wants is just to centralize it all” (SI_1: 00:11:59-09).

This restructuring implies firing many workers and at the same time brings insecurity for the remaining workers as to whether they will keep their jobs. Also, when the company changes the organization of the work process, most of the workers are forced to make changes in their biographies to try to keep the job, like take specials schedules, more working hours, changes of residence, etc.

On a related note, the heterogeneity of first and second class working conditions, even within the same company, create a problem for exercising solidarity with the workers in a condition of vulnerability. This leads to phenomena such as "union isolation" and "consultancy".

"… you have what is called, or at least what I call "union isolation", and what is union isolation for me? It is that as a leader, I care about my 200 or 300 members, but I don't give a damn about the company next door, because that one's not in my union, or just simply are not part of a union” (SR_2.00:15:32-39).

"… They came to me once, to offer consultancy, in exchange for some percent and… and I have seen that this is happening with many federations…” (SE_2:00:04:12-16).

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"… There is people that are profiting from this thing, there are people that are definitively profiting and that… and that is not right in the way in which they are doing it. Because they're lining their pockets with money as that person said, with new unions, why? Because the new unions' problem is that we don't know the issue” (SE_1.00:33:19-28).

The responses to the "perspectives" of these workers in the ongoing social division of work and its structural uncertainty, offer a range of answers from the union leaders which go from empathy to "sadness", “frustration” to "disappointment", concerning the labor precarity scenario.

"… they get more and more disappointed, because they can't, let's say, escape the place they're inserted into, their reality… um… I don't know of housing, education, health… I believe that this goes to, sometimes that pain gets worse, that, that, I don't know… if you could say that what they have is sorrow” (ES_1: 00:50-17-20).

"… I was crying and you say, how come a union leader is crying? (cries) because of the helplessness I feel and what has been happening inside the store, or the company, for having chosen the road of being a union leader where you can help so many people, allow them to escape the bad situation they were in …” (SR_3.00:05:32-41). one of the main concerns with respect to the working conditions is the structuring of work shifts – in relation to an insufficient salary, on the one hand, but also with regard to a worker flexibilization, which (in the case of our interviews) is interpreted as a "benefit" in precarious work, and an increased workload for the other hand.

"… for us it would be awesome and great to have a fourth shift, I mean, one long one and one night but earning at least 70% of the assignation, which is calculated based on some letters that we have, which depend on the grade you achieve, but not the 38% because that's too low, that is let's say, an economic difficulty, but that also goes for the people who do shifts for two long days, and two nights, who's health suffers considerably” (SSP_1:00:20:39-48).

"… they present more actions to be done in health (Public Health Sector), but with the same people, ok?, then you have that also, because of these commitments I was telling you about at the beginning of the process, that also goes… it also harms the quality because sometimes they privilege, they don't care about the amount, but the quality of the work you do doesn't matter, and that's something we see …” (SSP_2.00:27:34-40).

In this case, we are in presence of a certain "precarious symbiosis". This symbiosis consists in that the precarious working conditions and the work security offered by a contract are accepted in exchange for a higher salary. This involves work overload and health deterioration of the workers themselves, partially recognizing and trying to respond to the

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absence of (more) personal carrying out these news tasks, which comes from the "public" aspect of health, as a "common good" (and the demand of society).

"… if before the inpatient rooms were 80% self-sufficient, now that's exactly the opposite; almost 90% is for non-self-sufficient and that means more staff, and that is what is escaping our hands: so the emergency services are designed in this way which is why today we talk about a collapse, they are overrun with patients, people are being admitted as inpatients in attention boxes, because you don't have the inpatient service you used to have anymore” (SSP_1.00:34:16-21).

"… it is because of this same work system, the same system… um… of not recognizing the workers… um… of work overload, of years coming to do these shifts covering them many times, not with the staff you wanted… um… that is required because of a standards issue …” (SSP.2:00:31:15-20).

"… one could say <>, but you don't find it, and since… you cannot cover the months, the expenses of the following month, in the end you just cope. Even if you disagree, even if you're not happy, even if you have loads of criticism… um… it's difficult to leave it anyway, because of that, because you're in debt and because of the insecurity you have with your day to day life, what happens to you and what happens to your family” (SI_1.00:46:33-52).

"… (They leave) because they don't get a contract, because they offer them more money elsewhere, because they make them do too many extra shifts. Then they get tired, they get tired. Work is demanding. Work in the ERs is demanding, in general shifts are demanding because when you get there in the morning you don't know how many little kids are going to show up, when they're going to show up and how serious their conditions will be, and the system is super demanding …” (SSP_3.00:16:03-18).

Then, in the case of the health sector, the relationship with labor precarity opens the contact with a systematized social insecurity in the medical assistance conditions and the ways to "provide health to the people". This is the engagement with neoliberal policies that strengthen the growth of the private sector and deterioration of the public sector.

"…you don't have supplies, you don't have the things to work, and there are no sheets for the patients. They are saving, a lot, but they're saving in the wrong way. The medicine that people normally need is not being bought, they're getting money out of it, sending people TO CLINICS, because, for example, you don't have an Intensive Care Unit, you don't have other things and they transfer you. Instead of investing more money in public services, they're getting money out of the public services to put into private clinics …” (SSP_3:00:24:33-45).

Added to this is the "public" nature of work ethics in the health sector and its organizations, because it focuses on an activity that depends on the state's will and on institutionalization

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in terms of policies for this sector, which in turn generates a certain friction between the worker's occupational segments.

"… a proposal that hopefully one day we will be able to extend physically and in human resources according to our population, to provide a better care and response …”. (SSP_2.00:42:13-17).

"… it's like difficult to improve this relationship with the user-patient, we hope that now with this user satisfaction bonus, since now they will pay us extra if we are nice to (ff) the user, if we give them good responses, if we are able to at least do that, this is only because of how you treat people, this bonus improves then, then since there's going to be a money thing in between, we're going to, going to reduce …”. (SSP_1.01:11:32-0).

"… the humanization of health, in the end, you measure it on a money thing, money, and that shouldn't be like that, 'cos we learnt | to assist them with this humanization seeing that across the desk what we saw was a person...” (SSP_1.01:15:40-44).

"… it was hard to create awareness. Because awareness you get more in the people who are at the bottom than with those at the top. Because we know when a kid is feeling badly, I don't know! It's like doctors took it lightly but since we are the ones that have grandchildren, which have children, it's not a Light subject, and you know (laughing). (SSP_3.00:20:14-23).

In the case of the private sector, labor precarity in terms of working conditions and the phenomenon of social insecurity are articulated in the discourse of the union leaders as a way to promote activation of the union organizations and of generating guidelines to defend their labor rights.

"… you get to a point where you can't tolerate it, let's say, the abuse, the exploitation, the non-payment of your holidays where you worked, the amount of extra hours you work and you start thinking about your family, your way of living, and aside from that what's not easy that by the end of the month so much… so much sacrifice is not justified and from there I started questioning (…), why if I work so much am I not being paid what's right, why do we have to tolerate all this abuse …” (SP_2.00:05:15-28).

"… with the labor inspectorate you realize that for measures to be actually effective you have to set up a union, then this appears as a need rather than a strategy to… to aspire to better conditions, of having some weight, let's say, when facing your employer, it appears as something necessary …” (SF_1.01:27:29-37).

The reaction of the organizations in the public sector upon finding similar convergence diagnoses between labor precarity and social insecurity promotes that their meetings and national assembly’s haven a revitalizing character. These meetings are about sharing

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experiences and perspectives focused brought by the "work ethics" and public role of organizations like the Historical FENATS.

"… actually, when you see this we all cry (f), but suddenly we try to lift our spirits and get feedback, which is what happens in other cases and how it's been done, how it's being worked, but actually this thing that you, that I'm telling you, this you listen to” (SSP_1.00:36:13-5).

A particular case that stands out is that of the retail union leaders when referring to the nature of the working conditions (as working environment) and the internalization by the workers of these conditions as part of their own social reality. In this issue, the union leaders see a contradiction that makes union action difficult:

"… today, the worker doesn't feel poor when they are inside the stores as you can see when you go to Paris or Falabella there are beautiful stores, luxury ones, where the workers walk about with a tie and so forth, but they are poor, but they don't feel that they are poor because they are standing there, they prefer to work rather than being at home and seeing how precarious their houses are, so that is the job we have done, telling the people, showing them reality” (SR_2:00:22:09-17).

Another aspect associated to this is bringing dignity to the conditions where work takes place, which requires a sort of cross-cutting view on job stability, as well as on the forms in which the workers perform their duties and the expectations they have with respect to their jobs.

"… it wasn't just the thing about arbitrarily changing shifts, the thing about job stability, but there was an issue there where laws weren't being respected and they weren't provided uniforms; there were people who needed training and who never got it. I started working with a colleague who never received his course that they delayed and delayed and they never trained him. Right to the day they fired him they had never trained him …” (SE_1.00:54:13-23).

"… there are still people who think that workers work better when they are shown the stick, but… with this, the way some people treated others in the service where I worked changed, in the way they related to each other and to the public and with this at least my role was fulfilled” (SSP_3.00:05:36-45).

This discourse shows a very important referent: the idea that the labor culture should not necessarily be based in punishment and surveillance. The possibility of dignity at work, or

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the expectations about “treatment”, recognitions relations and reciprocity, can create a new labor space and a new kind of practices.

9.5.2.- Working Conditions and Segmentation

Through the outsourcing and "service sales" models, segmentation and productive heterogeneity offer the possibility of creating dialogues between workers of different sectors and companies and under different contractual and working conditions.

"… in terms of the main companies, there is an interrelation with the male or female workers of… of the main companies where they sell services (||), for example, in the contract with the mining companies” (SM_1.01:21:29-38).

The fact that there is a diversification of working conditions within the same trade union, workplace, etc. affects the consistency of union organizations and even, at times, generates rivalry between the trade union organization who try to represent the same workers (as we have seen occurs in the health sector).

"…my union and the union of the store want to merge, but they didn't reach an agreement with the other union leaders. That's not my case because I've been working on this for six months. But even so, I would like to… merge with them and become one thing, so we're stronger. So we work united”. (SSP_1.00:06:14-18).

In this context, working conditions become a space of solidarity and convergence with the "pure" interests of union activity. The contribution to the common well is part of the imaginary of workers, especially in the public sector.

"… we are more than anything unionists or trade unionists, that's what we contribute, each of us their own way of thinking and their position but it's not ours, it's ours to work on it here, our principles and our concerns are others, it is the worker and how to improve their working conditions, their conditions to develop as a person, taking care of both physical and psychological health” (SSP_1.00:09:10-15).

In the case of public health, it is possible to see that the different attitudes with respect to work and the relation with the "patient", could be divided into occupations that move around a context soaked in state policies. This fact generates dissension in the conformation

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of a work culture and in reference to the “work perception” in a space where social insecurity very notoriously spreads.

"…your recovery is not important, that the patients are there sitting and you are in a chair, and they're not lying back as they should, and what's proper is for each patient, after that, to come back for a check-up within a week; they put them all at the same level or worse than in an open market, they register them and they make them go through and through (…), so it's such a humiliating way (…), nobody says it's fine, there are resources for them to reduce the waiting lists, but that should be done with a bit more dignity for the people” (SSP_1.00:23:16-25).

"… now you can, mister doctor, you can do it and you can see the people in the system here in the hospital, go see your private clients where you also earn part of your income; of course you charge, but he also earns more than the public system itself, 'cos in general these are patients that don't have the resources to go to the private system so they do it through these way, and there it begins, also, the part of privatization of health, which is what we call it (SSP_2.00:34:47-6).

For the workers of other occupations in public health, for example the Doctor’ and his status, working in these conditions can lead to setting up an element of precarity (workload and high salaries), which ultimately does not bring the positions between both trade union organizations any closer, and this is part in How work is organized and the distribution of tasks in the sector:

"… they didn't want to pay the extra hours, but when they do it, because they apply to reduce these waiting lists, they have their people, they wanted to use the same staff that was on shift so they didn't have to pay them …” (SSP_1.00:26:00-11).

On the other hand, in the case of public health, meeting the patient directly in the assistance system allows for an encounter that is not always harmonious in times of shortages and insecurity of the public health system, and where the patient, sometimes has a violent attitude towards the staff, which threatens the worker's integrity.

"… in reality, people called you, who were they going to complain to?, against the officer who was working; you could see verbal aggression and sometime physical. This thing is annoying, the doctor's not there then, but in general the issue of the demand, the issue of the non-specialists…, the lack of OR hours, that's a recurring thing in all hospitals…” (SSP_1.00:39:42-46).

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In contrast to what is described above, it is possible to point to experiences like the Public Health Defense Front (Frente de Defensa de la Salud Pública), where the synergy between users and workers becomes a key element in challenging the relationship between social insecurity and work insecurity, while at the same time it impregnates a new movementist strategy to generate greater support from the community and greater negotiation power.

"… us, when we went on strike for that, we didn't go alone; we went with the users. We went with the patients that needed the hospital. So we didn't go alone, we didn't have the mass of people saying "this hospital is on strike again". We had a mass of people saying "we want a new hospital, but not a concessioned one" (SSP_3.00:36:04-17).

It is quite clear that the dynamic of their work overloads makes the ethical commitment to their work difficult for workers, and as a result it engenders of lack of identification with the work, which is questioned by the trade union when they are looking for better retirement conditions. There still is an identification of one segment of workers with the patient in the public sector, more than with sector himself.

"… today we see a pretty considerable absenteeism (…), if I have 180 days in 2 years exclusively because of medical leaves, my health is not compatible, and they can apply article 151 and say bye bye (…), there's people who have been here for 20 something years and with this considerable absenteeism, which are the least but we have them, but there is also a person of over 50-year-olds (…), many people who are already waiting, the only thing they want is to retire so they are waiting for incentives to be able to leave and that is another group that is also on medical leave… um… who don't want to know about the system anymore …” (SSP_1.00:42:12-20).

"… people look at us like saying you are the workers, but we're in the same line as they are. If I wanted to get assistance I would have to wait the same time that they're waiting for. Being a health worker won't get me any assistance any quicker. It's exactly the same. We are users and workers. Because also we don't have the money to go to the clinic” (SSP_3.00:41:15-29).

On the other hand, and added to the working and hiring conditions, different generational groups make interpersonal problems between workers a part of the daily routine which once again complicates trade union organization itself:

"… we have had to face, on issues of interpersonal relationships, accusations of diverse nature, like, for example, a young person that tells an older person, who's still there and who is missing a couple of years to retire, where sometimes they tell them, and forgive my words, "when is this fucking bitch going to retire”…”. (SSP_1:00:45:22-26).

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In the same way, the segmentation between "the young ones" and "the old ones" poses a challenge to the work ethics (in the public sector), and presents a new generation of workers with no identification with their work, which puts a stress on the “public” orientation of the basis of the health system's trade union structures

"…they don't have that commitment (the young people) and… what we call working your heart off for your organization; no, I think that out of 100 probably 1 or 2 you'll find like that, but the vast majority when you talk to them, and that happens when you're working, during your shifts, these are people that are just arriving and they look at your watch and they ask you if you're coming from a long shift and they say "it's 9 in the morning, there's still x hours left to go home ". (SSP_1:00:45:54-8).

"…people don' have that point of view anymore today, well at least the young people today, we… coming to work for them looks like they're doing the system a favor because they tell you we should be thankful that they showed up, I mean, it feels like the system has to be available for them and sadly this will always be like this …”. (SSP_2:00:48:52-59).

The conditions of insufficiency and privation in the case of public health also set the users and the workers against each other in many situations and, moreover, it supports the phenomenon of segmentation of the occupations in the workplace, elevating the status of doctor above all other professions, which exacerbates the intra-occupational problems in the workplace and in the collective organization.

"…many times it's the professional doctors, the same happens in the ER, in the ER they hit the officer that comes out, that's the one who receives the aggression, the one that goes out to call the names, but when they get straight to the doctor, no, with the doctor no (f), nothing”. (SSP_1.01:10:20-0).

In this way, the role of the confederations, since they are not organized by sector, creates certain difficulties in terms of representation of their members related to the productive segmentation logics that are reproduced in the union space.

"The CUT doesn't work, even less for the private sector; as private sector we don't feel represented by the CUT (…), the public sector is represented, well I don't know if represented, but at least they are able to join forces and call all their members to the site. While, for us, beyond this thing of the minimum wage and the show about it, there's nothing else, inside the CUT” (SR_1.00:41:48-53).

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"…the CUT doesn't represent 100% of workers; it doesn't, and from there on it escalates to the huge hollow they have experienced in the CUT throughout all these years, 'cos the CUT, who it is representing today, it's the public sector. And The rest of the workers? What are we? No, the CUT has never cared about having a relationship with the other workers” (SF_1.01:09:24-39).

"… private organizations versus public organizations, because, because the organization it's like a union of us, it belongs to the company and they realize that (…) it's not an incidence for them, so they prefer to not be in it (CUT), and you know that at a given moment you have to be a majority to win. And in this moment the public (sector) goes above the private, and with a wide percentage. We would be saying about 80%, 20% (SR_3.01:16:40-5).

"…it's enough for the CUT to fail in only one economic demand, and the CUT crumbles completely in the public sector, I think it's the only, the only plus holding the CUT right now …” (SP_1.00:55:39-45).

On a related note, the work culture of the business world produces conflicts of communication and dialogue when dealing with such situations as the "everyday well- being" at work, which ultimately reinforces the dependence on normative and inspection mechanisms of work.

"… I stamped a report at the labor inspectorate for obvious reasons. I tried to talk to the company about this dining hall thing. We are in my company, in my branch we are, there's 90 people here, and there's a dining hall where 10 fit. Then, if you start doing the math, where do people eat?” (SPR_2.00:15:20 – 26).

"…the company takes a position like "yeah, well let's see", and it's let's see and that's it. Then they see it and that's how it stays …” (SM_2: 00:19: 17 – 19).

In the case of the public sector the strikes and the protests constitute the focal point to guarantee improvements in the working conditions, though always related to a sense of "loss" associated to the times of the military dictatorship.

"… (The working conditions) have improved as people have taken to the streets to get more things. Our base salary is very low. The base salary of a public health worker is lower than the minimum wage… our base salary is 80 thousand (US$ 154 approx.), 90 thousand (US$173 approx.) depending on your grade. But to that they have added different types of bonuses, of extra stuff. But everything has been won in the street” (SSP_3.00:44:15-33).

"We’ve been getting things that were lost back in the dictatorship times, a lot of things, but on starting again we have managed to gain ground. But there's a lot left to do, 'cos our base salary is very, very, very, very low. And all that they calculate for you is with the base salary, the replacement compensation and something else” (SP_2.01:19:22-34).

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One of the outcomes of productive segmentation is a public rights institution (in the retail sector) which fulfills the task of supporting the outsourced workers who do not have the support of or who do not belong to a union, which integrates a new strategy of relating to the phenomenon of labor precarity and the vulnerability of a whole sector of workers.

"…we spent one year, traveling throughout the country, picking up ideas from the workers, and what are the main things that are lacking for outsourced workers; we reached a consensus reading what we have as law 'cos, of course, we can't disregard what there is, what there (the outsourcing law) is we have to try to implement ” (SR_4.00:37:29-38).

In this case, of the issue is differentiation and discrimination between those workers directly hired by the company and the outsourced workers.

"… the client company, they treated us like trash, they always treated us like trash, (…), we were considered cleaning and service staff, and I'm not saying that… how do you call them, that cleaning people are second class, just saying that we were treated as being less than them …” (SE_1.00:55:11-18).

"… we never had the support of our company, we never had their support, I mean, they treated us like trash, they mopped the floor with us and then they discarded us” (SI_2:00:57:19-22).

"… discrimination happens because the law allows discrimination to happen, (…) we get a good meal and they (the outsourced workers), (…) they are allowed to come into the dining hall, but they can't use anything that's in the dining hall, only hot water, and what's more, in some stores the outsourced workers are not even allowed to go into the dining hall because the law says so” (SR_3.00:33-35:05).

The objectives of the union activists move between attaining the well-being of the workers, guaranteeing well-being conditions and labor rights, such as meals and access to certain areas during breaks. These are part of the main claims in the unions’ repertories:

"What we requested from the main companies as outsourced workers, is that… they provide them with the physical space, not to feed them, not to give them lasagna, French fries or chicken, no! What we want is for them to have the physical space for them to go and have their coffee, and eat their bread, or eat nothing and sit and relax for the half hour they have to rest, by law …” (SR_4:01:17:46-57).

"…just imagine that the outsourced worker is frisked, all of them!, when they go out, the security guards, all of them!... None of them is free from that, they are all checked, we're not going for the argument of whether they should be frisked or not, but rather that the

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workers hired by the company itself should be subject to the same kind of treatment" (SR_2:01:22:36-51).

In the public sector it is possible to see the convergence of trade unions in an experience which started in 2012 with the objective of consolidating a front that would provide a multi-sector response to the neoliberal policies in the sector.

"… there are cross-cutting issues, that affect us all in all the trade unions, and when you can, you are able to see what is universal, you can achieve a joint fight. We have enough links with other organizations and I think this will happen… well they are working in the Mesa Social (a sort of organization), where there are also users, and I think that through that, through that we'll have a different fight” (SP_2.01:02:43-57).

These efforts are beginning to show the possibilities of challenging the forms of differentiation that affect the working conditions. Respondents mainly indicated that these phenomena of convergence are still responding to a differentiation between the public and the private sector in spite of the effect in terms of communicating and organizing that the student movement has had upon adopting the union demands and the demands of the public sector's trade unions.

9.5.3.- Working Conditions and the Vertical Organizational Logic

What can be deduced from the current discourses of the union leaders on the matter of working conditions and their relationship with the vertical organizational logics followed by the unions up until the last decade is that they seem to connect to a verticality and representativity inside the unions’ characteristic of the previous generation of union leaders. To this generational rupture adds a perspective of political representatives who built "labor precarity" as a legitimation discourse in unionism.

"… the previous leaders, they have always… they have always had a pro-company disposition, pro-company; when our union affiliated to the confederation, the CONSFETEMA, the confederation of metallurgical unions and others… I think that… no one has ever told me but I feel it, that they affiliated to that confederation because… that… um… that confederation (stutters), I think it's like very, very, very pro also… um… very pro-company, yeah, so one of the objectives I put for myself was like very, there's people very close to me in my circle of friends that I've told them what I want to do with the union today, I have told? The leaders themselves, in fact I invited them to the union schools …” (SM_1.00:16:59-08).

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"… this is the great representation done by our senators and representatives and the government, who fill their mouths during the campaigns, talking of our class, of our insecurity, of our poverty and this is what we have, it's the only response we could give… there was nothing we could do …” (SI_2.00:44:52-07).

This verticality seems to be the answer from the interviewed leaders, who had an experience in union training, as a way of overcoming the gap in knowledge and in participation in union activities, and of seeking the strengthening of relationships with bigger organizations, starting from the same segmentation conditions that were described before, looking to strengthen the collective bargaining processes.

"… so, what I'm achieving is to… remove my union, our union and take it to the CTC, the copper workers confederation, presided over by the fellow worker mister Cristian Cuevas, and that we already had a meeting last week and he received us, his council, his greater program, and we also went, so during this month we'll carry out this vote… I know we'll have a better backing to face the company, because when we had the last bargaining (…) the benefits were very poor, extremely poor; I believe that in the end I've… I've… we were the ones that lost more than the… I mean, the company won more than what we could have won” (SR_1.00:20:07-09).

"… Whether the union school was good, yeah, it was good. There I practically learned everything about the legal matters, but being 'in the eye of the storm' is something else entirely. It is something else, it's something else, and you have to go with your calculator. That, I didn't know. You have to be there with your calculator because they give you a figure and that's when they start; they all arrive with a calculator saying I cannot give you two point five and what happens is that one tenth (???), one tenth there, but you have to be ready to know, to know what the Consumer Price Index is doing… to know what their profit is” (SE_2.00:38:10-29).

In other cases the responses to the VOL have been the immediate division and breakup of the organization, accompanied by a justification of the criticism of the leadership itself and its political stance during the decades while the concertación was in government. This is blended with the policy inside the government's public sector which guarantees an electoral base that would back them at election time:

"… negotiations that are done, at a level, let's say, national, everything came from Santiago, and it is not because of a logic of whether we agree or not, politically, with those who are ruling our country today… um… they, how do I put it, they still have a purely political commitment to them, and they declare it to them” (SSP_1:00:09:10-15).

"…if any way they would leave or we had elections coming (2009). We had elections coming, so it was clear that they had to give a good end of conflict bonus, they had to give,

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I don't know, I good readjustment… a good readjustment… um… and I think that the people still have that instilled somehow …” (SSP_2.00:23:32-41).

Also, there is criticism of the current union leadership experiences in the CUT, based on these vertical conduction logics, which present a paradox: they do not integrate what is "new" about the current working conditions, but they do not integrate "old" elements of the Chilean unionism tradition before the dictatorship either. These criticisms are focused on Arturo Martinez, the President between 2000 and 2012.

"… in the CUT I think that… that I find it like very, going back to Arturo Martinez, that it's like very old fashioned, it lacks freshness; I think that it's fulfilled a cycle, and I think that it's time for it to step aside and for a new leadership to arrive, younger, fresher people, new visions, that have a… that handle a certain dynamic, but a dynamic that allows them, let's say, to move around in the current system, and that in this way we can see… um… in, in this system, being able to recover, let's say, the unionism we had before” (SR_1.00:42:46- 51).

"Arturo Martinez, I think, fulfilled his cycle, it's bad for him, I think at the end I was… I told Cristian, I was there for the first of May and… it was embarrassing what happened, they said things, I think he was listening, I think that… Well, I don't know..." (SI_1.00:52:46-1).

"… I believe that, that he should do that, he should assume, take that as reference, what the first of May was for him, what… what the people, what we all expressed and shouted, I think that… that for him to rethink, I think that maybe in a polite way, in a polite way step aside and catch youngsters, new people, young people and with… and with new ideas” (SM_2.00:32:48-1).

The electoral system of the CUT, which involves a proportional vote, is also being questioned since it adds the issue of re-running for leadership positions, complicating the issue of the organization's transparency difficult. Moreover, it is centered on certain types of workers, which makes the critical voices stronger, while the legitimacy of the CUT weakens.

"… the first thing that should happen is for Arturo Martinez not to participate, to step aside, that he doesn't run again, to give room to new organizations” (SM_1.00:44:23-26).

"well, the ideal thing would be to be one member one vote, I don't know, but I think there must be, I believe that Arturo Martinez conserved this structure to stay that long. I don't know… I don't know what the deal is, I don't, but I think that it's time to present new

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leaders, also for the female colleagues to participate, it's important to have women there present” (SP_2.00:35:59-6).´

"…I don't know how much longer Mr. Martinez will lead his system of… directing this CUT without participation or with a vague participation with the quotas that he thinks are necessary and that are on his side" (SSP_2.01:02:45-9).

It is possible to see that, in terms of working conditions in Chile, there have been fracture and fragmentation processes in the trade unions. In general, and added to the activities of the VOLs in leaderships in central unions and local unions, the worker movement is in the middle of a greater transition. Here, we can mention the iconic case of public health:

"… from 2002 on, we were one single organization here in this hospital which was FENAT, and of course we belonged to CONFENAT; in 2012 this organization was broken up because of the health reform, where a minority sector called FENAT UNITARIA, today, withdraws from the national agreements without respect and non-approval from most of the union leaders of the health reform as it was made. So this is a break at a national level and it was in some regions and we also had of those few regions (Araucanía, Bío-Bío, Los Ríos; Aysén and Metropolitan), because it was in three regions where this break took place, the Metropolitan the 9th and the 10th, where we were unlucky enough to be part of this break, which brought us, which has brought a great deal of confrontation between the leaders themselves” (SSP_1:00:05:24-30).

"… now there are many organizations, before it was only one which was FENAT, the national health workers federation; today there are, how many are there?, more than 6 or 7, and aside from that, others are being created, I mean, the professionals, the doctors, they have created their own, the nurses have their own, the technicians have their own, so this has created a range of divisions …” (SSP_2.03:06-18).

"… they are leaving CONFENATS, and are setting up another one. Well, we support that setting up another one. We left, we disaffiliated from CONFENATS and we are setting up a new confederation, which is the one that is f actually ighting against the system, and that's defending the workers. And… and we'll make it, we'll have our organization in 5 regions” (SSP_3.01:23:33-45).

Furthermore, it seems that the diversification of the working conditions has opened two segments in the union and trade union world: one that identifies with the actions of the CUT; and another one that related to their status of "novelty" in the world of work offers and demands new ways of representation and action to and from union leaders:

"… I believe that today the union leaders have to open up and stop giving excuses and start working, and you start working aiming to (…) help the worker without expecting an increase in return of your… of your current account due, payments of quotas, but aiming to

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encourage that worker, who may not be in your union, but who may be part of another” (SR_2.00:16:11-17).

"… a change is needed, a change… that is substantial in the leaders we have today, today you're not going to get Arturo Martinez or de la Puente in, or any leader from the big ones. we want the bills to hopefully be incorporated in the demands, which hopefully the CUT will have” (SR_4:35:37-41).

"Today, they (the CUT leaders) are comfortable, and the fact that the new leaders who were just starting, we want to work for the workers, work for the workers with a sense of… um… not profiting with the workers, but presenting projects, presenting ideas, and that these ideas can come true” (SF_2.00:56:13-20).

Upon listening to reiterated statements that express the bureaucratization and falsification of union organizations. A typical practice is the inscription and participation in the election of “ghost unions”. These unions don’t really exist, proving a lack of regulation and lack of transparency inside the CUT itself about its election processes:

"… they have lots of paper organizations, and it hasn't democratized, starting from their election system; they have a weighted vote, I think that our organization is one of the few or even the only one where the vote is universal and democratic, I mean, here you have one vote, one vote in any chance, it doesn't matter the votes I represent, which could possibly be 100 or 200 (…), the CUT has paper unions, where they don't even exist but, they do, if on the paper they say they're representing 1000 people” (SSP_1:00:55:06-18).

“Many unions don’t want to participle in the CUT, because everything is arranged… the elections are fraudulent. No much people are interest. There are practices referred to as “truchas” (deceitful), like the “ghost unions” that are register in the CUT but they no longer exist. However, “they vote” in the elections making the same leaders always win” (SI_2.01:43:12-29).

Moreover, the national unions sometimes encounter limits to representation in the regions as a result of the working conditions present in certain companies (national structures very vertical) or by the needs of "transparency" with information about the action of union leaders (union member very actives with the demand of accountability). So their processes of separation and division are very common, and they end up in regional and local organizations, as is the case in some unions of the retail sector, industry and health.

"…for example most of the workers, not the leaders or anything, we wanted to create a union inside the store, to solve these problems that choked us; it was interesting because I didn't have it in my mind to become a leader or for us to, leave the national union. The idea

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was to place a leader inside the national leadership, only one from here, from us, and well… sadly people didn't opt for that decision” (SR_1:00:05:32-38).

"… sometimes, we have seen a great deal of, a great deal of personal political interest in this matter, that has led exactly to that, to the decentralization of the different classes and the union organizations, because there is not 100% trust until, and many say so, until we don't see a change like, like a notorious one …” (SI_2.01:09:58-10).

"… CONFENAT are always saying that they are part of the bargaining table, but we belong to the national FENAT (…), we cover in Chile, we cover a larger number of health workers than the other. They are 20 thousand (workers) and CONFENAT covers, I don't know, 5 thousand and we cover 16 thousand. However, who gets listened to, the CONFENAT and the national FENAT? No. So, it is not integrated to the table even though it has a larger number of workers, you see? Then this all leads, leads to decentralization, a sense of unpleasantness, of distrust …” (SSP_2.01:12:32-53).

We can also see that the CUT plays a counseling and dialogue role for the younger unions, through their main leaders, but no institutionality, or any work that aims directly towards this objective is perceived in the organization.

"… Mr. Julio (Suazo, President of the Araucania Regional CUT) said to me that he had been the most upright one of them all, he had been the one who told things the way they are, it hurt, I got home quite discouraged, but… I started realizing that that was the path I had to follow, ok? Because it was him who wasn't charging me (laughter) more than anything, for that, and he was giving me the help I needed, and… the man helped me a lot on changing people's mindsets” (SE_1:01:42:07-20).

"… the CUT has been a fundamental pillar, they've given me support in matters of (…), they have provided facilities to carry out meetings but that's the everyday reality, and… they have helped me in that way, they have offered me guidance …” (SI_1.01:23:34-40).

The distance between the new workers, more related to actions and autonomous organizations, and a more consolidate unions’ organizations with historical and traditional practices, create a very difficult scenario for communication and a union renewal.

The personal leadership also consolidated some discrepancies, resentments and conflicts for the unions’ organizations. The problem for transparency, democratization, and the autonomy from political parties, generated very strong link on dependency and questionings for trade unions.

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9.5.4.- Working Conditions and the Predominance of a Defensive/Reactive Logic

The relation between the working conditions and the DRL is very simple to explain. The structure of unions in Chile decentralizes the labor relations and the labor conflict. So, the unions have a very small possibility of action, and a limited field of action when not in collective bargaining processes.

The working conditions are the topic of surveillance for unions’ leaders in the workplace, but in most of the case, with a defensive logic. This tactic aims to look after ensure of labor law, protecting the workers protecting workers from abuse by the employers.

On the one hand, finally, it is possible to see, in the convergence of the outsourced company unions with the unions of the client or main companies, a rupture of the defensive logic due to solidarity and the structural pressure of the unions in the main companies, becoming part of the problem of the outsourced workers.

"… they have several outsourced economic activities as a company, and those are apparently precarious; this issue we took it and we talked to the manager about the situations, for example, that they weren't wearing warm clothes, that there was abuse, that the supervisor arrived drunk; all these issues we have taken to them and made the respective reports because, in the end, they are also part of us, they are a part of the workers in the world” (SR_1.00:15:55-06).

"… they themselves don't make the claims, to us, about what's happening with the workers and it's also difficult for them to organize; I mean, our union is very difficult for them, there's union persecution and all” (SF_1:00:41:15-18).

At the same time, unionism is critically observed and understood by these workers councils, because the councils promote a defensive logic concerning working conditions. The unions’ leaders know that their ways of fighting and their repertories are seen by councils like ineffective and unsuccessful, but they are shore about their experiences and knowledge in the collective bargaining process and in the strengthening of unions in the conflict position.

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"… fighting from a stronger position, if we go for a… for example, for a minimum wage… setting up a position and not backing down, I mean… even a little… um… they can call us intransigent, but we have to have our convictions, no backing down” (ET_1. 01:22:05-04).

"… when we want to go on strike, we'll do so but thinking that we're going to win (pp)!, we're not going to go into these tiny little strikes that in the end give us more headaches than… if they are not strong enough”. (SSP_1.00:58:11-0).

"…if somebody comes with a better idea, who wants this thing to change, they trample all over him, and that's the end of good ideas and we'll keep wasting time, I don't know how many more years, 'cos it's sad, it's sad that unionism today is wasting time. We haven't been pushing for a change to the legislation and in matters of collective bargaining” (SR_2.00:17:22-32).

The predominant idea that separate unions from workers councils is the “negative orientation” from councils. This idea says that unions would not produce any changes or important benefits for the workers, and the “negative orientation” is focus in develop repertories more close to the employers interests.

Both expressions state the need to replace the defensive logic with a logic which requires being more offensive and conquering things for other workers with a new bargaining and work conflict attitude, one which is closer to breaking mediation channels than to reproducing them since, in general, these are perceived as obstacles rather than facilitators of union action. "… we try to use the inspectorate as little as possible, I mean, we search for the information, and we try to solve the problems when facing the company” (SR_1:00:26:01-04).

"… to place barriers for the workers, as the inspectorate does, if you have one single worker that makes a report, but what are they reporting, and what needs to be done now, so the worker gets lost and leaves, and the same in the legal counsel” (SR_2.00:24:05-11).

"… the people from the inspectorate, they tell you not to have too high expectations, that you won't be able to get more than this, even though you can still get more, but they're always like calming you down and lowering your morale, they… they defeat you, they make you defeat yourself” (SE_1:00:34:35-40).

It is also possible to see that union leaders consider social movements and solidarity with other unions in Chile to be "forms of rupture" that are necessary, and give more probability for get better results in the labor conflicts.

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The alliance with social movements is more related to the contingence in Chile in the historical moment and context that we conducted these interviews. But, the discourse shows positive perspectives for the emergence of new repertories linked to the public sphere and civil society.

"… the current movements are setting out the, the guidelines as to how to face the… the changes that our country requires and together with the social movements, the union movement …” (SR_1: 00:53:05–06).

"… I think that they play an important role, let's say, those social movements… a role that some say should have been taken on by the parties, parties we thought were going to behave at the level of what historically happened in Chile, the socialist party, for example, the radicals, who else… um… I don't know… the communist party present now in congress, I don't know, I expect a lot from them, it's also a challenge for them …” (SP_1:00:15:09-14)

"… every time a union strike came we tried to go there and support them, sometimes share experiences and all, and that's how we created relationships, relationships with union organizations, (…), with the students it's mainly the same (…), with consumer organizations, what do you think you could say that you have in common with consumers? Of course, we have things in common with them, because our workers are also consumers, and we have done activities together, with confederations …”. (SR_4.00:48:01-09).

"… there should be a relationship like, like of more unity. I believe that if we all rowed in the same direction, independent of whether this is group 1, 2, 3 or 4, we should all work united, with teamwork. We would get a lot more things than if we were all dispersed” (SPR_2.00:42:05-13).

Nonetheless, upon asking about what these relationships would be that could bring the social movements and the union movement together the responses were once again diverse. For example, asking in companies that handle and have available classified information about environmental damages and the communication potentials that could be created between socio-ecological organizations, district/local and environmental, the answers still reveal an institutionalized discipline in union activity:

"… there is an awareness that the companies are acting in a… are bulldozing, are destroying… but we're aware that there's very little we can do, at most demanding for things to be complied with, those who do the sampling, that they can, let's say comply with the regulation; but we know beyond those results (…) This (results) are displayed through a document that is quite far from reality” (SM_1.00:56:01-5)

"… but it was also stranded, the self-control of our, of our… and I think that in our country we lack that awareness. Everything that was left was the judgment of the companies, self-

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control, so they have, we in the end, we are left to the dynamic of what our clients dictate, 'cos in the end the billing follows what… what they request from us, but if we were more, more rigid with the regulation, maybe the company wouldn't exist. I believe that, that that is a major failure from the, from us as human beings, we are aware of this, all my fellow female and male workers are aware of this, but there is very little one can do …”(SM_2.00:59:00-13)

The responses to an institutionalized discipline, even in a theme such as the environmental one, it is intrinsically connected with the performance in these labor regime. The coercion is a way of make loyal the workers to the enterprise mains, and constructs a behavioral model.

In this case a company that develop chemical analysis in mining, make that the possible responses to deactivate the dependence link between workers and employers, go back to being a challenge for the frailty of union organizations. Denouncing practices that damage the environment created a complicated dilemma for unions, where the strength and power of their position as a bargaining and political player, is not enough to challenge the entrepreneurs without suffering consequences and punishments to the organization.

"… first we have to organize, structure a strong union movement and ensure that there's more people, more committed, more affiliated to the unions, and I think that there, if we could openly report things, and say it, say; the leaders will report what we are seeing in a company; but instead there are laws that are very lax, very soft, and there's no, let's say, information channels, that, that social sensitivity for the environment is generated, let's say, etc.” (SM_1: 00:59:50-54).

"… if it were up to me, to me, of helping through information of course, I'd do it, I would give out information, specific data, for them to have more support, let's say, for their… reports, right?, I believe that, that that should be like that, but I think that… I don't know… there's still a road to walk” (SF_1. 01:02:06-3).

Finally, this diagnosis ends with solidifying the defensive position of unionism in its relationship with social actors and movements, upon recurring again to the company as decisive center for the generation of solutions.

"…creating round tables of… with the company, let's say, with the client, which would be CODELCO. Talk about the matter, being openly honest, what's going on? What are you doing? What's happening, for example, in Ventanas?, they've been there for 40 or 50 years, and it's not that we're just noticing, but that from its beginning it's been polluting, and our entire coast, the entire coastline from the north to the fifth region, it's all polluted, there are no… there are no shellfish, no life. All the zooplankton has been destroyed because the

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water with costina is extremely acidic, ok, being honest, being honest show yourself, I don't know. I believe that we're also lacking that as a society” (SM_1.01:06:45-6).

In terms of public health, we find the experience of the Public Health Defense Front (2012) which saw the participation of users and workers, which made it a unique workers' organization and that implies a "new" view on trade union activity in terms of decentralizing from the logic of salaries and economy of health assistance, and focusing on the "public" and "ethical" focus of health.

"… when the front was formed, it started working with the user who at the beginning didn't participate much, because you saw the people when they were told the targets … you know maybe in one more year, to see if they reacted, there's no appointments available for another whole year, 'oh, ok"”. (SSP_1.01:05:48-7).

"…take this officer and put him next to the user, where the user is a person, where the user is a human being (…), sadly people today, as they say, work for money and against this, that's a bit difficult for those that are just arriving and for those who don't, who've been here for years to get this discourse out of them, if we know that we all work for the money but you also have to put your share of warmth in it, or else. I think the health issues sometimes, win and prevail. I'm not saying we got discouraged, but we're going to leave and that's the thing”. (SSP_1.01:15:50-3).

"…this health was not made with health doctors, it was made with economists; today we serve what are often numbers, indexes, graphs… how to reduce their stay in the hospital, so that I can use my beds more, and that means through producing more, I'm more efficient, I'm a better manager” (SSP_2. 01:18:23-0).

"…We achieved that the Ezequiel Gonzalez Cortes Hospital was not concessioned. Now, how did we do it? We created a front. We created the open front for health in the southern area, which was the first health front created in the country, and we worked immediately with the users, with the mayors, together with the mayors with the representative of district 28. We started gathering people together, we gathered a lot of people; we created union schools, we did loads of things with the people. We started telling them, what is concession? We went to several places in the south to teach about concessions and we had such an impact on the people, that we even organized marches, and a bunch of workers to go against the concession” (SSP_3.00:32:30-55).

It is possible that, in the framework of the defensive logic, the unions aim at considering the specific nature of their working conditions as key elements of their actions and vindications in terms of collective bargaining. This, in any way, requires knowledge of the labor regulation in several matters, which are the focal points of the unions in terms of the institutionality of the defensive logic, which is promoted by organizations such as the CUT.

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"… I think that you've already noticed that I read the labor code from (article) 315 onwards, law 16.744 (…), the health and safety regulations. I started reading it all, I started grabbing them and joining and placing them, placing them here and then there” (SPR_1.00:35:18- 32). "… they came to us, they helped us, they encouraged us but once the CUT disappointed me, that's when they said no, if they're giving you this; No, stay there, no more mister nice guy with them, they never thought we'd get so strong …” (SPR_3.01:10:24-31).

The working conditions, in the complexity of their nature, show that their diversity is clearly accompanied by a deepening of the problems of legitimacy affecting the central and historic organizations that seem to understand or implement neither the changes in union action that labor precarity requires nor a logic that aims at a substantial economic democratization to the benefit of the diversity and plurality of today's workers.

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9.6. Summary of empirical findings

Returning to the beginning of our research, and considering the results and the analysis of our interviews, we can start a process of discussion and debate about the hypotheses which shaped the structure of this work.

This process gives the final perspective to the definition of new focus for study, and more importantly, explain the soundness of our findings and the possibilities to contrast, in a thoughtful way, the epistemological successes and failures that we obtained in our research.

9.6.1.- Changes at Work and Changes in Unions

As we said before, our first hypothesis proposed that the changes in the world of work have impacted unionism, in its morphology, its internal contradictions and its current decline.

We see that different processes, like work precarization and labor flexibilization, are creating big transformations for the unity and homogeneity of unionism. The rise of precarious workers and the exploitation of outsourcing throughout the entire labor market created a new prospective and inter-relations between the traditional unions and the new unions.

On one side, the restructuring process and the labor laws in Chile in the 1980s designeds a new scenario for the unions. The productive changes were only possible with the political repression and persecution of leading unions. These facts help us to understand the break with the more classical way of action and the weak position of unions in society through the legislation with the Plan Laboral (1979) and with the main aim of union destruction.

The new political economy created in the dictatorship was focuses on the development and growth of economic sectors related to extractive dynamics, global value chains and commodities exportation. These sectors were the key for the introduction of news production relations and news labor relations in Chile.

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Despite the difficulties created by labor flexibility and outsourcing, the unions persist but in a very complicated scenario. The State and the political coalitions promoted an economic agenda concentrated on economic growth and employment generation yet without considering the quality of work.

In this context it is possible to understand how the situation of unions changeds so dramatically in just two decades. The precarization and the fear to organize was a condition for creating a more limited set of workers’ expectation and interest in unionism.

On the other hand, this new economic sector and these new working conditions were the bases for the creation of news union cultures and news unions’ practices today. Breaking with the traditional legacy of unions in the 1990s, the new sectors developed an independent learning process corresponding to new expectations and discourses about work and employment in society.

The prevailing uncertainty in the news working conditions created different forms of understanding the concept of work. What seems paradox is that in this uncertainty, the workers’ resistance or the protest are part of an attitude of assuming risk, and this risk is social, because the lack of social protection places the unemployment in a position of social disaffiliation.

The constraint to engage in trade unionism is systemic. This constraint has significantly impacted unionization in its organizational strengthening and means of protest. We can see this impact in the unionization rates, the decline of collective bargaining and the difficulties for major protest on a national scale.

9.6.2.- Continuity and disruption in unionism

As we reviewed above, the new economic structure and the new working conditions impacts the social position and the social capital of trade unions in Chilean society. This

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social position was one cause for the arising of internal changes in unionism related to the historical break in the development of a working culture after the defeat of 1973.

The internal changes were part a process of real destruction of symbols, political orientation and physical disappearance of the leaders of the trade union movement. This process made necessary a transformation of unions’ practices and methods of action.

We noted in our second hypothesis that the characteristics of continuity and disruption in unionism haves been subjet to new phenomena that mark the development of unionism today. We saw in Chapter Seven that the chronology of unions in Chile (in the last forty years) is rugged and full of contradictions. One could say that union renewal was the outcome of a process of adapting to the difficulties created by the dictatorship. Overcoming these difficulties and finding tactics to survive was the prime objective of unionism.

This survival is the only thread of continuity in the union movement. The continuity lay in dealing with the context of persecution and promoting the organization in illegality. We saw too, that this confrontation was easier for some groups and political parties in the unions’ movement. This fact generated better conditions for promote some union’s practices and union culture, closer to the conservative way of understanding labor relations.

In the late 1970's the situation changeds. The relationship between political parties and the Labor Plan from 1979 would generate a space for action of trade unionism. Trade unions began a collective work of re-organization which would be accompanied by collaborative actions outside the workplace, creating trade union coalitions at the national or sectoral level.

This new way of unionism took into account an economic structure more concentrated and the hegemony of precarious work. The unions’ defensive logic with regard to the process of precarization was not successful and the consequences are present until today.

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In summary, the disruption in the economic and structural base, added to the disruption in the unions history, legacy and development, involve a new perspective for unionism in Chile.

9.6.3 Precarity and reinvestment of self-conceptions

In our research it was possible to understand the importance for the unionism of labor precarity as new condition for the models and possibilities of organization. The different representations of precarity among the trade unions are related to the heterogeneity of experiences, age, gender, sector, etc.

Labor precarity shows to be problematic but no a limit to the unions’ organization. This creates very different perspectives of a concept of work, while always sharing the idea of work as a space of conflict crossed by power relations.

The varying interpretations of precarity in the working conditions results a problematic reinvention of relations between unions, because they generate some structural distance in between public and private sector, and promote the polarization of two poles of organization.

These two poles are associated with the historical process in Chile, the influence of political parties and the differences in the working conditions. These elements are disrupted the labor precarity, putting pressure on the union leadership and redirecting the unions’ repertories.

In the same way, the topic of labor precarity enters into the unions’ discourse. Precarity, as a political concept, reaches a significant extent in the perceptions and descriptions from workers about their own conditions. This fact is interpreted in our results as the expansion of a new perception and significance of the workplace and work in the Chilean society.

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Precarity dinamyze the fracture of the more stable structures of discourse in the workers and weaken any traditional perception they may have. Linked to political processes developing today, the new perceptions of precarization, together with the critique and resistance, amount to a great deal of politicization of labor.

Our third hypothesis was related to this issue. We presuppose that labor precarity is internalized by unions as a reinvestment of self-conceptions and interpretations. We find that it is very difficult to understand labor precarity without considering the changes over the political context in the last years.

In this sense, labor precarity is a phenomenon in the middle of a society in change and crisis. The rise of social movements and social politicization from 2011 to 2013, express the characteristics of the historical context in which we conducted our interviews. We identified a revitalization of political performance and public discourse of trade unions.

Trade unions are critical of working conditions, are against labor flexibility, they denounce the obstacles for trade union’ organization, the character of the political class and the close relationship between government and corporations.

Similarly, what is changing in the unions’ perceptions is the idea of dignity and respect for they own work. This situation involves an assertion which comes into conflict with the naturalization of labor precarity and the relations with the employers.

The social politicization is the context that provides some clues about the redefinition of the limits of trade union action. The cooperation with social movements, the participation in demonstrations, the solidarity with other social actors and the empowerment in political debates, are different repertories that involve a different conception of unionism and its role in society.

This new role is based on understanding labor relations and labor precarity as part of a complex social framework based of inequality, political power decisions and economic

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power in a neoliberal society. The unions develop a critical and active positioning in the field of power relations, modeling a dynamic vision of their actions and a commitment to serving the social expectations and demands from the public.

9.6.4 Labor Precarity, heterogeneity and union activities.

Finally, we found in this research that labor precarity has diversified forms of employment. But not only this, we were also able to establish that labor precarity involves a change in the understanding of labor rights.

This change is part of a renewal of discourses and practices of unions, especially in the area of social protests, as well as inthe generation and design of proposals for new labor legislation. This process represents a counter-trend to the process of labor precarity.

The ideas about a new legislation, concerning the limits to collective bargaining, legal strikes, anti-union practices and the replacement of workers on strike, install a new dynamic in trade unionism. The complexity of this debate is part of the politicization process in Chile, where social rigths and social welfare are central elements to understanding the political changes in the country.

In the same way, we were able to identify the fracture of a unitary and homogeneous unionism, by openness to a new leadership, various form of direct confrontation and conducting negotiations, which is linked to the rupture with the stable core of a neo- corporatist unionism casued by precarity.

Moreover, the generation of expectations about democracy results in a critique of political power and the consolidation of legal disciplinary instruments in labor relations. This situation breaks with the traditional approach of trade unions, i.e. with the idea of peaceful coexistence of trade unions, political parties and government.

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This is characteristic of a more critical discourse on the adaption and consensus thesis in corporative unionism. A permanent annoyance and discomfort with what are identified as "the causes of neoliberalism" and its production of inequality are central ideas in building the speeches of union leaders. They are younger leaders, creative and with a political analysis of precarity.

Labor precarity is understood as yet another consequence of neoliberalism. Unions and experts observe the labor precarity from the point of view of productive restructuring, and with the regard to its continuity in the political cycle of “democratic transition”.

So, this discomfort with neoliberalism places the unions at the crossroads of confronting the traditional practices against neoliberal policies. They introduce news practices and repertories confronting precarity, which reflects the new political situation in Chile and the new understanding of democratization.

9.6.5 The Crossroads of the Chilean Unions

What is the meaning of the crosroads? The crossroads is the place or moment where two or more roads meet. For unions the crossroads is the synthesis of all the tensions and the conflicts (external and internal) accompanying the development of a new stage in Chilean society.

The politicization and tendencies to democratization are part of a new context for problematizing the logics, strategies and positions followed by unions over the last 30 years. Those crossroads today are social and labor precarity and the neoliberal policies in a unequal society.

The unions are suffering from process of conflict with the most typical and traditional repertories in the workplace, in the relations with employers and with the government. Inequeality is understood as a social problem, that is found in work, a important element of reproduction.

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In this sense, the traditional defensive logic beginning to be combined with a social movement logic; strike are more radical and prolonged; working conditions are confronted and become the cause of confrontation; the traditional organizations of unions are questioned due to their lack of democracy and their proximity to political parties; union leaders recognize the union autonomy as a challenge and a necessity for the strengthening of trade unionism.

But, in the same way, this search for more political and legal changes is a new challenge, because it requires greater effectiveness in the repertories and the decision making within the trade unions. Fighting against the segmentation, the precarious working conditions, and considering the vertical organization at work, trade unions are in a learning process on how to overcome the phenomenon of labor precarity.

Facing and adapting to labor precarity involves a new perception about the naturalization of precarious work. In the same way, the recognition of the consequences of labor precarity involves a new perception of workers and their differences. The segmentation is no limitation to organization, because this new recognition involves the confluence of different kind of workers (precarious, stable, outsourced, etc.), and different social actors.

The insufficiency in the salary still is an important element for strikes, collective bargaining and for social movement cooperation, but it is not the only motivation for fighting against labor precarity. Uncertainty is a factor that complicates the planning of trade unions, so it is on in the agenda of conflict in the workplace and on the list of topics in the collective process of mobilization and debate of political reforms.

Finally, we must say that the Chilean society is changing. The possibilities of success for trade unions in Chile are rooted in this fact. Labor precarity is an important and central debate for unions, a communication bridge with the international debates and work quality parameters. This represents a chance of confluence and organizational power not just at a national level, but also at the international level.

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The international level means a strategic base for new discourse and projects about this new idea of society, about work and about the future. At this intersection trade unions are experiencing different changes in the traditional positions and that is part of a problematic scene where trade unions have new problems to resolve.

All those elements create new tensions and problematic debates for unions. In this sense, and considering labor precarity to be an important dimension in the unions’ practices, we expose in the conclusions some cores that are important to be considered in the social and organizational strengthening of unions in Chile.

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Chapter Ten. Conclusions

Cores and problems of Chilean unionism facing labor Precarity

When we started this research we were curious about the relation between labor precarity and the strategy development by new unions in Chile. The question of this research focused on the modification of the behavior of unions in a historical perspective considering the new repertories and meanings constructed around the phenomena of labor precarity.

After the analysis of the interviews and the identification of the main problems and thematic cruxes within unionism, below we present a network of problems which unionism faces as a result of the extension of precarious labor over the last thirty years.

We can identify the influence of labor precarity in the reinforcement of union practices, focused on the historical transformations in the world of work. We define a nucleus as the concentration of the problems we presented in the previous chapter (5.4.1) and their tensions and disputes with the emergence of thematic cruxes (5.4.2). This relation, seen from the matrix of labor precarity, its different aspects and its representation in the discourses of the union leaders, offers us a synthesis of some of the guidelines that can constitute a historical legacy, new tasks and strategies for Chilean unionism nowadays.

The presence of the four dimensions of labor precarity (which we defined in Chapter 2) provide us with a relevant starting point for understanding the present state of the unions, the crisis, obstacles and problems that they normally encounter in labor relations. Precarity is a permanent condition for unions, and demands the adaptavity and creativity of the workers to challenge the adverse conditions of fragility and labor flexibility.

This experience give us a perspective of the new possibilities and capacities found in the experience of the unions’ leaders in contact with the phenomenon of precarity, and also about the new political interpretation and meanings which are attributed to precarity.

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In reference to the repertories of unions’ action and the constant presence of labor precarity in the work sphere, we found a connection between the permanent legacy of the dictatorship and neoliberal politics. Precarity does not emerge in the narratives like a isolated issue without considering the historical process in Chile, because, like in others sphere of society, work and unions are confronted with the contradictions and consequences of neoliberal policies that institutionalized labor precarity during the dictatorship.

This reality reminds us of the duality inside the trade unions and their leaders, considering the positions and intentions that try to overcome the institutionalization of precarity while focusing on a critique of the dictatorship. The union strategies’ renovation is deeply marked by this narrative against dictatorship and the political parties’ practices in the government.

There is a synchronization of the precarization process and the transformation in the world of work, and the result is more complexity in unions’ strategies and their repertories. The existence of precarity in the present of unions has led to the emergence of a series of problems that we synthesize in the next pages as part of the current network of problems that confronts unionism, in relation to labor precarity.

Problematic Core I: Unionism and the legacy of the military dictatorship

The productive restructuring, and with it the metamorphosis that work suffered in the 1970's, was accompanied by the persecution, torture and disappearance of union groups which represented a classist unionism (Gaudichaud 2003). In spite of the undeniable repercussion of this process for the constitution of a following generation of union groups and of unionism in general, the period of the military dictatorship in Chile (1973-1989) has been lightly regarded as part of a single-cause narrative to justify the difficulty to develop a greater adaptation, diversification of bargaining strategies/tactics and the strengthening of collective bargaining of unionism, establishing a retrospective process and not an introspective critique.

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On the other hand, the search of a socio-historical basis of the genealogy of fatalist structural subjectification through unionism has been erased by a line of sociology of work, and from unionism, which develops a political coupling to the single-cause narratives, as part of the "democratic vindication" (Zapata 1992), but which intends, at the same time, in disguise or openly, to recompose the tripartite neo-corporatist discourse as a logical justification, to the condition of victim of the "objectified" process of the military dictatorship.

We believe that the tension of this nucleus is centered on the contextual narrative transfer of the “victimization” to the field of the historical present. This is conditioned by current labor relations and a flexible world of work, which entails that the displacement of the archetypal worker, from the condition of victim to the condition of active subject and being responsible for their own practices, generates and invigorates the self-conception of unionism as a social actor of the labor precarity condition.

In synthesis, unionism suffers the duality of confronting its reality, that is to say, the complexity of its scenario, between the process of traumatic victimization (dictatorial) and a self-critical interpretation of its praxis as a social actor (post-dictatorship).

Problematic Core II: Relationship between the political parties and unionism

The agreement consolidated with the also called “protected democracy” (Zapata 1992; 2004), maintains the same institutionality in the labor relations from the dictatorship. The labor code of 1979 was deepened (reforms in labor market flexibility, the legalization of outsourcing, etc.).

In this area, the political and union leader groups have sustained, mainly from the CUT, a tripartite and neo-corporatist model (Guzman 2004), which has connected and has been functional to the imperatives of the neoliberal production model and the management of the labor conflict.

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Upon evaluating the consequences of neoliberalism for the development of labor relations, the extension of the labor precarity phenomenon, the CUT's agreement with and support for the governments and candidates of the Concertacion political coalition (1990-2010) were evaluated by the interviewees, retrospectively, as obstacles for the development of an autonomous unionism independent from the political variants and from their programs- proposals in labor matters, which seems to be a blocking point for the construction of greater legitimacy and organizational power for the unions in general.

Although, on the other hand, a mutual cooperation model has been undeniably established between unionism and the political system, a model which has been integrated into the discussion of relevant matters in labor areas, this has been accompanied by the paradox of not consolidating an institutional power in the labor relations system that would be more inclined to serve the protection of the workers and the strengthening of union power. According to the findings of our research, a clearly negative identification with the political parties and a lack of faith in the political class on the part of union leaders seems to be the case, despite this contradictory relationship between political parties/government and unions. To this last point we can add the new recognition of the union’s structural power in some productive sectors, like those of the public sector, retail and mining.

After 20 years at the head of the union, the leadership which moved between the political parties and the union world is worn out and has seen a series of crises in legitimacy which are constituent factors of the new scenario that unionism faces in Chile (Julian 2012a). The tension is found in a cross-cutting social phenomenon, which is the loss of faith in the political system and the low approval ratings of the political parties by the citizenry in general.

The demand to generate a new type of relationship with the institutional and non- institutional actors of the political system seems to have been converted into an imperative for the diverse social actors. At the same time, the distrust in political supporters, their representatives and their agreements has become a central element to understanding a tension facing an old structure, founded on the triad of the government-union-party

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consensual model, and the emergence or overflow of the triad from a society and community ethos (Ross 2007), represented as democracy-union-community, as a form of emerging sociability.

This triad, which breaks down the fragile balance of the domination model of the last decade (profoundly based on the passive labor precarity and the active social precarization), is seen encouraged and broken by workers that promote diverse repertories, with their own mains, and a diversification of resistance and protest’ methods.

Slowly, a greater harmony is produced with the rest of the social actors, to achieve both short-term objectives (for example, change in the labor legislation, and reforms in the social protection area) and means which cover the social rights plane (such as the support of and solidarity with the rest of the social movements, in health, education, etc.). The diversity of the objectives constitutes an active protest against labor precarization and a massive and regressive coupling to the trend of social insecurity in terms of co-modification and impoverishment of life.

Problematic Core III: Statements, performances and lack of credibility

The historical methods of action and protest of the working class have been forgotten at a central union and federation level, in contradiction to the imagery of work which traditional unionism promotes nowadays, which is associated with a peripheral Fordist concept of work (De la Garza 2001; 2011) insisting on stable work as the focus of union organization.

On the other hand, the series of “anti-neoliberal” statements from the political world with respect to labor relations has not led, in the union arena, to the generation of protest actions and the achieving of the social rights erased by neoliberal policies, which can be seen in the conservation of the 1979 labor relations structure, in the highly imbalanced social structure and depth of the commercialization of social rights.

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In the case of the Central Workers Unit (CUT), they have maintained a discourse and a neo-corporatist practice for the last 20 years. Their general alignment has been close to the policies and programs of the government (Julian 2012a), which is why national strikes and stoppage methods – historical means and methods of the working class – have been displaced as part of the line of political-social “consensus” (Agacino, 2002).

The last call for a national strike was issued by the CUT on July 5th 2012, in the midst of the controversy surrounding the project to adjust the minimum wage, in the midst of a profound crisis of legitimacy of the direction of the union, before the elections of the leadership of the multi-trade union in August that year. This call was made with difficulties in the planning, and with serious failures in the inclusion of the lower ranked organizations, and with an Intendent (regional government) unwilling to authorize a march along the main street, Alameda Ave., that day.

All these circumstances ultimately limited its mass scale and ended with the scarce credibility that Arturo Martinez had left, who was finally displaced from the Presidency of the CUT by the candidate Barbara Figueroa, of the Communist Party, in the last election of the trade union in 2012.

In the previous year, the calls for a national strike by the CUT which accompanied the student movements of 2011 were neither developed nor planned with the objective of having a “mass scale participation”. Many leaders, on being asked about this call, were quite critical by saying that there were 3 faults in the call: 1) the lack of information existing with respect to the aims and goals of this call; 2) the lack of involvement of regional and local leaderships; and 3) the lack of knowledge with regard, especially in the private sector, to the punishment mechanisms for missing work.

In the latest call (07.05.2012), the low participation in the national strike and the limited participation by the teachers union – or rather only of some union leaders through their privileged status – added to the incoherence of parallel calls for a national strike and a national protest march. This shows the fragility of unionism’s communicative power, as

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their calls do not find a shared narrative in an efficient practice in reality, considering the workers participation.

This situation once again shows the need for a more democratic organization model, with greater planning and information, with more effective horizontal/vertical communication channels between the different worker sectors, both between their unions, confederations and federations, as well as with the different workers that are not protected by unions and/or are members of any of them. This is one of the conditions which marks the development and strengthening of the communication power of the union organizations who aim at activating and mobilizing their members (Dörre & Schmalz 2013).

All this clearly shows the need and the opportunity for devising action strategies that seek to generate mass scale action and to extend the ties of identification and representation within the working class, moving within the framework of fragility of the union setup and in pursuit of labor stabilization.

Problematic Core IV: Democracy and Union Unity

One of the great current problems for the Chilean union movement, and for the Latin American one, for that matter, is union unity. Union unity, a key part of the CUT since 1962, where in theory the interests of the working class would stand out over the ideologies, where the “unique” character of the Confederation was founded, has eroded due to the same continuing problem over the last 30 years: a lack of internal democratization within the organic structure of the CUT which has weakened its representativeness and fractured the multi-trade union.

The permanence of the authoritarian structures of the military dictatorship in Chilean society (Moulian 2001) can also be noticed within the union organizations. In relation to the CUT, the debate present in the interviews with the union leaders, referring to the modification of the internal representation and election structures , which replicate

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bureaucratic verticality patterns, has not (yet) translated into specific proposals and/or the implementation of an organizational change.

The continuity of this organizational logic is a focus of tension, because with the repression to the more “radical positions” and the hiding of this internal conflict in these structures, are generated some reluctance, discomfort and resentment among members. Until now CUT follows a dizzying rhythm of being called into question, decomposition and fragmentation, which directly affects the dynamics of membership, participation and action.

Firstly, it is imperative to reformulate the election methods of the CUT. The last elections of the CUT, on 23rd August 2013 were once again held under the weighted voting system, which, not surprisingly, lead to mistrust in and questioning of the newly elected leadership.

A series of tensions in the administrative-organizational protection of the entity and of unionism can be deduced from this nucleus: a) change in the election methods, (from the current weighted vote to universal vote); b) the practices associated with the use of electoral rolls of “ghost unions”; c) the public accusations of electoral intervention and even fraud; d) the exclusion of workers for having a contrary opinion to that of the previous incumbents; and e) union parallelism.

The strengthening of the union's organizational power (Dörre & Schmalz 2013) is, or may be, a direct result of the generation of an election and decision making system which allows the participation of base level workers in order to generate greater credibility, identification with the organization and legitimacy for the rest of the social actors that are mobilized by means of more democratic and participative logics (Bensusan 2000; Frege & Kelly 2004b; Dörre 2013).

Likewise, there is already a cross-widespread social aspiration aiming at the democratization of the social structures, of the forms of democratic participation, and the reinvention of the political system in general, that is to say, not limited to the head union and its organs, but to the whole union world and that of the organization of the workers.

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The tension between the unions’ structures is maintained. For one side, we have the unions that are still keeping the principles of action with a “power concentration ethos” and the verticality of its exercise (Kelly & Frege 2004a), and for the other side, those which intend integrate a neuralgic decision-making network, which involves the diversity of workers and consolidates a new union model.

This tension is the one which will surely mark the consolidation of a collective united unionism, and/or the continuity of its trend towards fragmentation and atomization following the traditional vertical logic.

Problematic Core V: The "new" unionisms

The transformations of the world of work are associated with the emergence of more insecure working conditions and the ever-increasing presence of non-classic forms of work (De la Garza 2011; 2012), which modifies and constitutes the nature of employment and the relationships and subordination dynamic. New forms of union integration and of the working class are becoming more and more multiple and diverse worldwide (Kelly & Frege 2004b).

In the case of Chile, the diverse workers organizations, in their different variants and "types" of work, are organized by setting up embryonic logics of solidarity, cooperation and coordination with community and civil society. The current task of these "new" workers sections is the deepening of the emerging articulation, intercommunication and inter-gender coordination, an inter-generational, inter-sectoral and inter-territorial process looking towards strengthening and the advancement of their organizations.

In this context, union leaderships which are marking a new scenario of labor conflict and of the union panorama emerge (Arbazua 2008; Nuñez 2008; Baltera and Dussert 2010). We have been able to be validate this in the discourse of the union leaders about the presence of

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new tactics to tackle job insecurity in the framework of the forms of democracy and organization in the unions, and partially in the "change" of political direction in the CUT.

Meanwhile, "beyond the reach of the union" in the general population which is not susceptible to union affiliation, new worker nuclei are installed which, as a result of not having rights to unions, bring together embryonic organic forms which unite the workers who are not covered by labor legislation (due to an absence of contracts or a receipt-based contract) and/or who simply begin to discard the union as a means of association and action (Julian 2013b). These sectors are characterized by non-conformity to uncritical perspectives; adding a dynamic to a union democratization project from "an outside" which resonates inside the new unions, the latter of which are in similar insecurity conditions, allowing for identification processes between both sectors.

In this sense, the CUT can play a strategic role as the potential generator of unifying and meeting spaces for a heterogeneous class fragmented by the current labor relations, forms of employment and working conditions. This challenge, i.e. the strengthening of the worker's position of power, connects with the productive heterogeneity and the diagnosis of "the crisis of unionism" (Zapata 2003) in the sense that the workers' unity is questioned; as a result, the tension of this nucleus runs between: a) deepening the decay of the CUT in case these challenges are not taken on critically and creatively with the objective of a renewal and modernization of unionism; and/or b) structurally strengthening the workers organizations, beginning with democratization and expansion into a sector where traditional unionism is not yet integrated in its heterogeneity (Julian 2012a).

Problematic Core VI: New fragmented, atomized but worker-related subjectivities

The new structure of the working class, based on various changes due to economic restructuring (the imposition of flexible accumulation models, with the resulting insecurity and flexibilization of work, the new forms of working below capacity, over-qualification, etc.), establishes new coordinates to understand the working world today, and these are the nuclei in which the working class is emerging (Leiva 2009). Workplaces have doubled in

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their diversity, giving birth to insecure identities which are constantly subjected to the flexible oscillations of business interests.

In this segment, many workers are without the union affiliation, collective bargaining or in fact any type of means to present their demands and needs in the workplaces, which are marked by smaller-scale companies, where the ban on unions becomes a structural phenomenon. Added to this is free-lance work. This level of vulnerability also shows the objective need for bringing together the positions among these forms of work, this type of worker (Ugarte 2006; Caamaño 2007) and a new union practice in Chile which manages this dimension in their repertories.

From the discourses of the union leaders concerning their representation of the "most insecure" sectors, it is possible to confirm that, currently, the relationship between union workers and over-insecure workers is almost non-existent. This reality, i.e. that of the extension of the job insecurity phenomenon, has not yet led to an active problematization by unionists in terms of modifying their practices and strategies to intervene beyond the nucleus of workers organized in the union or who have a more stable employment relationship with the company or the employer.

Likewise, this situation creates a panorama in which the modification of the patterns indicating segmented precarious work are hard to find.– As a result, the union leaders do not manage to integrate the more vulnerable workers (yet) into official labor relations. They are focus on the labor precarity of their own affilliates, which leads to a dissociation from the most precarious workers.

The fragile right to form a union and engage in collective bargaining for unions of transitory workers and for inter-company unions is accompanied by the dependence on the willingness of the employers to bargain. This case show how the attainment of union affiliation rights and of effective collective bargaining becomes completely relevant again, not just for a sector that currently considers bargaining a disciplinary factor (Julian 2012b)

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with a deep economic background, but also for a sector that does not have an effective right to this and is limited by current legislation.

The elimination of the forms of insecure hiring and of over-exploitation represents an enormous challenge for unionism, which also involves the restructuring of the conditions and regulation of production relations, the generation of a social protection network for the worker who is free-lance and/or unemployed. It is this point where the forms of institutionalizing the new experiences and problems of union organization emerge as a need for better life conditions.

Problematic Core VII: Legislation and the New Labor Code

The 1979 labor plan and a series of elements included in it are part of a strategy for promoting the insecurity of today’s unionism and generally weakening it. This strategy, which accounts for 30 years of disciplining and fragmenting workers organizations (Julian 2012b), could only be contrasted, according to the comments, conversations and experiences of most workers and union leaders that we contacted in this investigation, with a transformation of the regulatory framework of labor relations.

The low coverage rate of collective bargaining has become one of the problems that unionism faces. The demand for a new collective bargaining model, including an integral protection of the union, an adjustment of the norms towards the right to effective strike (which does not allow the replacement of workers during the strike), seems to be a promising strategic package to stimulate union affiliation and the organization of unions.

In the same direction in some union’ leaders appears the idea of generating a new standard for the punishment of companies for anti-union practices. A model in which the workers are the ones who receive the money from the fines instead of the State, an where the punishment is complemented with the prohibition of providing services to the State after being sanctioned, etc.. These ideas go in the way of find new incentives for the

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organizations to strengthen their institutional positions and their organizational power inside the world of work.

Subcontracting and outsourcing are a perverse form of labor flexibilization, The reduction of wage costs, and the level of disciplining which continues to be imposed upon unionism and the collective action of workers (Soto 2008) are some of the characteristics of the working class' normative distortion.

Social security and the trend towards insecurity are stuck between a flexibilizing business class, and a State that "must" (at least in agreement with the international conventions signed on "Decent Work" of the ILO and the agreements of the countries of the OEDC) avoid job insecurity and abusive practices of employers directed against the worker's social vulnerability. This objective can only be achieved through: 1) the generation of legislation which promotes a protection and symmetric model of labor relations; and 2) a union culture which is capable of achieving this, as subjects capable of exercising their rights and (institutional) power.

Problematic Core VIII: Gender, Migration and Ethnicity

In Chile, the differences in the work place between men and women show a great discrimination against women when it comes to remunerations and the types of contracts. Union affiliation of women is at 12.1%, while for men it is at 15.1%. In spite of having a new union leadership with an open gender policy, this has not led to new unions’ practices which are focus on the thick-end of collective contracts on one side, and a national policy pertaining to equality and the improvement of the conditions and remunerations for women in the workplace.

While many sectors tend towards the feminization of the workforce, especially in the financial and agricultural sector, the persistence gaps in salary and working conditions can become a new gulf of insecurity and over-exploitation of the workforce.

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This problem has put a clearly agenda in the gender issue, which places the worker's group on alert in respect to the emerging tension of fragmentation and competitiveness under their protection. Internal problems like an inter-gender fights (fighting for employment), and the permanence of a sexist culture is one core that need more education in the working class culture.

In addition, civil society aims, with the articulation of a whole series of demands, at an expansion of the gender concept to include the defense of sexual diversity and of the options of gender construction which transcend heterosexual binarity. Masculinity and femininity constitute part of the discussions and debates of union organizations worldwide, with the objective of building a "non-chauvinist" union movement that aims at generating post-feminist proposals to redesign the day-to-day relationships, the operation and the organization of work. This constitutes a link that is not only discourse o “just words”, because unions are collaborating with organizations of the so-called "sexual minority" (in search of acceptance of equality and non-discrimination), showing that unions pass through updates and learning about cutting-edge experiences and other social actions in the field of gender relations.

On the other hand, the migratory flows from Peru, Ecuador, Argentina and Bolivia to Chile, which have been concentrated at a regional level, have made it necessary for unionism to begin to look at the matter of the phenomenon of immigrant workers and immigrants in general, as these have a severe lack of protection from discrimination and from potential abusive and irregular practices on the part of the employers (Jensen 2008; Sir 2012), creating an important focal point for labor over-exploitation, or secondary exploitation (Dörre 2010).

This link of solidarity and of promoting rights may have a considerable impact if accompanied by a joint strategy which stamps out xenophobia and racism as divisive factors within the working class, and which promotes its identity through collective action. This is also applies to the particularities of and respect for ethnic and native groups in Chile and their presence in the current setup of the working class.

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This tension, which marks a new concept of work, is one of the challenges the unions need to tackle in order to develop new strategies that adapt to the new conditions of a globalized labor market in constant cultural/spatial flow and, on the other hand, that do not generate new dynamics of competition and violence between workers or encourage further processes of fragmentation and insecurity of working conditions.

Problematic Core IX: Union Leaders and the Legacy of Political Parties from the Concertatión

The corporatist tactic exercised by the CUT, at least to a certain extent, was a reflection of the political program of the concertación (Coalition) during their 20 years in government (Frias 2008). The maneuvers among the stormy waters of neoliberalism turned the tripartite dialogue into a mere synthesis of two decades without unionism being able to impose a position that would consolidate the working class, both as a political subject and as subject of policies.

Whether privileging one policy or another, the tripartite dialogue could not be attributed to the arbitrary work by their leaders, both figures and "personal leaders". What we can establish from our analysis and our historical review is that the tripartite dialogue would be part of a group of political forces that to a certain degree have instrumentalized the union movement for their electoral purposes (Gaudichaud, 2003; Aravena & Nuñez, 2011; Julián, 2015).

The lack of vision in respect to Lebensraum (living space) for unionism, both in its structural malaise and weaknesses and through the indecision produced by internal tensions, invigorated the trends towards the decline and illegitimacy of the hegemonic union project, currently increasing the large scale ruptures in unionism, which were also echoes of the political defeat of the coalition of parties in the concertación in the 2009 Presidential elections.

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Probably this experience was a lesson for unionism in Chile, which must be evaluated and analyzed in depth in order to get rid of this problematic cores of tensions, to re-study the relations being setup with political parties and to generate new forms of coordination and negotiation with actors of the political and economic systems, to generate better links with the social actors and movements and with the most insecure labor nuclei.

Problematic Core X: Unionism between "The New" and "The Old"

During the last two years we have seen how social protests have taken to the streets of the country, have begun to generate discussions and debates about education, the environment, energy policies, rights concerning sexual diversity, native peoples, etc., which have been synthesized into the idea of calling a constituent assembly (Mira 2011).

The tension of decidedly sustaining a democratizing project means for unions to not be foreign to the social conflict and to the different consequences of the policies which neoliberalism has promoted. This project exists, dialectically, between "the new" (contingent and emergent) unions, and "the old" (traditional and nostalgic) unions, which become structuring parts of a new practice in Chilean unionism.

This is the tension which drives towards a re-founding process which has as its objective: 1. To articulate these socio-temporal and strategic political dimensions in a new praxis of unionism; and 2. To strengthen its organizations and proceed to the expansion of protection/representation of the complex and changing working class.

In this new socio-political context, the capacity of unionism to engage in horizontal dialogue and to become the mediator of the social actors will be, once more, one of the demands and interjections that the social movements will put forward to unions.

These demands will surely be accompanied by a new kind of recognition, revitalizing the forms of identification, collective actions and helping to proceed through different goals towards broad claims that are assembled from the workers and the union’s perspective.

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We see that the situation studied above is not just attributable to phenomena "exogenous" to unionism, in reference to a structural reading of their crisis. However, the unions' crisis likewise has its base in a set of representations from the union and working world itself. Unions are linked to the subjectification of labor relations, understood as part of a subjection process. The complicated thing is that unions understand themselves as objects in this process.

The results of symbiotic identification with the "I-worker" in the idea of workers as objects of economic changes, and the internalization of work discipline by the union leaderships, etc., have established serious problems of disorganization, fragmentation and union segregation. These problems define some of the main coordinates of the context of unionism, not only at a national level, but also in the global context (Moody 2001; Zapata 2003; Munck 2003; Waterman 2004).

On the other hand, we believe that it is necessary to develop an approach between social research and the challenges that the workers face in an asymmetric working world, because it is these challenges that more constantly require information, organizational support and democratization strengthening processes.

In this complicated task the social researchers can generate certain approaches for cooperation with practices, knowledge and skills, building socio-political-communicational bridges between the actors, and creating a public focus for sociology and social sciences.

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Appendix No.1

Instructions for the interviews transcription from the study “Labour precarity and Trade union perspectives”

This study used a qualitative methodological design that provides for the application of in- depth interviews.

They place special emphasis on the analysis of the views and experiences of union leaders in the treatment of the issue of precarious employment as part of a union’s action, hence not only interested in identifying the construction of meaning given to the precarity in relation to different actors in the work sphere, in the political system etc., from the perception of the union activist.

Accordingly, carefully follow the instructions outlined before you begin the process of transcription, as this is essential for the proper development of the analysis.

1) Format: • Letter arial 11. Single space. • Number of pages. • a letter size sheet. • Do not use symbols or formats that are not identified in this guideline.

2) Participants Identification At the beginning of the interview people indicate their name and occupation. Transcribe the initial presentation as follows: Rosario: he works as a receptionist at North Metropolitan Health Service. Victor: he works as a clerk in the State Defense Council. Assign each person a code; W (+ number) or M (+ number): when speaking about participants, as woman or man. Rosario: M1. Víctor: H2.

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Carlos. H3.

In the event that the filing is not made in the tape, for confidentiality reasons, there is also a code previously assigned to the name of the audio file. The above statement must account for the interview of each particular person, to identify individual discourse. Identification was made from the "voice" of the person, which is not as complex because recording was conducted using a digital system and is of high quality. Speakers characterize the conversation as appropriate, using the assigned code and using the code (Inv:) when the researcher speaks.

3) Rules for the transcript of the conversation: • Transcribe textually without editing or fail, and incorporating all expressions by speakers (Oops, Oh, phew, um ... uh, eh ..., etc).

• Identify prosodic symbols corresponding to those components of the voice beyond the second joint, such as changes in tone, voice intensity and amount. Identify those indicated in the table using the following nomenclature

Nomeclature Expression ¿? Interrogation ¡! Exclamation ….- abrupt cut in the middle of a word ǀ brief pause ǁ Mid pause <….> long pause, too o <9>, indicating the seconds subr emphasis MAYUS greater emphasis :: sound lengthening (p) Piano (said in low voice) (pp) Pianissimo (said in very low voice) (f) Forte (said it aloud voice) (ff) Fortissimo (said it in very aloud voice)

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Identify any other lexical phenomenon whose description helps you understand the context in which the conversation unfolds, and point in parentheses (). Examples: (laughing), (angry / o), (crying) (looking at B, etc.).

• Mark braces borders in which no lexical phenomena occur outlined above using the following example:

H1: {(laughing) I can not believe I} | but will that H2: {(pp) give me the pencil | by fa}

• Detect and identify the overlapping shifts the word through the use of brackets and placing the overlap just below where that occurred.

Follow the example below: l) H1: because I do not want to see this movie m) H2: [is that you never want to go to the movies]

Report relevant aspects of transcription, using the following symbols:

(???) intelligible word

Æ to the left of the line to point out something interesting for the analysis

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Appendix No. 2 Selection of Interviews

Number Code Sector Sex City Age 1 SR_1 Retail Sector H ST E2 2 SF_1 Financial Sector H ST E2 3 SF_2 Financial Sector H ST E3 4 SF_3 Financial Sector H ST E3 5 SPR_1 Private Health System M ST E1 6 SPP_2 Private Health System M ST E4 7 SI_1 Industrial Sector H ST E2 8 SSP_2 Public Health System M ST E4 9 SSP_1 Public Health System M TM E4 10 SR_2 Retail Sector H TM E2 11 SR_3 Retail Sector H TM E1 12 SE_1 Security H TM E1 13 SI_2 Industrial Sector H TM E3 14 SM_1 Mining H AT E2 15 SM_2 Mining H AT E3 16 SR_4 Retail Sector H OS E2 17 SP_1 Public Sector H OS E3 18 SE_2 Security H OS E1 19 SP_3 Public Sector H CP E4 20 SSP_3 Public Health System M CP E3 21 SSP_4 Public Health System M CP E3 22 SP_2 Public Sector H CP E3

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Appendix No.3. List of abbreviations

ENCLA Labor Surrey OIT (ILO) International Labour Organization INE National Institute of Statistics CEPAL Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean SP Superintendent of Pensions NENE New National Employment Survey. NESI New survey Supplemental Income. PPAA Anti-union practices. RRLL Labor Relations DC Christian Democracy PS Socialist Party PC Communist Party UP Popular Union MIR Movement of the Revolutionary Left CNS National Coordinator of Trade Union CDT Central Democratic Workers FUT United Workers Front CEP Confederation of Private Employees CTC Confederation of Copper Workers MDP Popular Democratic Movement CAT Autonomous Coordinator of Workers COTIACH National Confederation of Federations of Workers Trade Union of Food Industry, Tourism, Hotel and Restaurant, and Related Derivatives CGT General Confederation of Workers MOSICAM Trade Union movement for the Changes UNT National Union of Workers CODELCO National Corporation of Cooper SE Company Unions SIE Inter-Companies Unions STI Independent Workers' Union

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ST Transitory Workers Unions HP Productive Heterogeneity STN Segmentation AT Atomization LOV Vertical Organizational Logic ID Disciplinary Institutionalization LDR Defensive and reactive logic CLACSO Latin-American Council of Social Science FENATS National Federation of Health Workers CONFENATS National Confederation of Health Workers COSENA Constitutional Court and the National Security Council FENAMI National Mining Federation, FENATEX National Federation of Textile and Clothing FIEMEC Industrial Federation of Building and Construction CONSFETEMA National Confederation of Trade Unions and the Workers’ Federation of Electrometallurgy, Mining, Automotive and related sectors

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Ehrenwörtliche Erklärung

Hiermit erkläre ich, Dasten Julián, geborem am 14 April 1983 in Osorno, Chile

1. dass mir die geltende Promotionsordnung bekannt ist;

2. dass ich die Dissertation selbst angefertigt, keine Textabschnitte eines Dritten oder eigener Prüfungsarbeiten ohne Kennzeichnung übernommen und alle von mir benutzten Hilfsmittel, persönlichen Mitteilungen und Quellen in meiner Arbeit angegeben habe;

3. dass ich bei der Auswahl und Auswertung des Materials sowie bei der Herstellung des Manuskriptes keine unzulässige Hilfe in Anspruch genommen habe;

4. dass ich nicht die Hilfe eines Promotionsberaters in Anspruch genommen habe und dass Dritte weder unmittelbar noch mittelbar geldwerte Leistungen von mir für Arbeiten erhalten haben, die im Zusammenhang mit dem Inhalt der vorgelegten Dissertation stehen;

5. dass ich die Dissertation noch nicht als Prüfungsarbeit für eine staatliche oder andere wissenschaftliche Prüfung eingereicht habe;

6. dass ich nicht die gleiche, eine in wesentlichen Teilen ähnliche oder eine andere Abhandlung bei einer anderen Hochschule bzw. anderen Fakultät als Dissertation eingereicht habe.

Jena, den 1. Juli 2015

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Curriculum Vitae

Name: Dasten Julián Vejar

Date and Place of birth: 14.04.1983 Osorno, Chile.

Address: Cataluña 570, Temuco. Chile.

Phone: +56961182816

E-mail: [email protected]

Family status: Married, 2 daughters

Nationality: Chilean

Occupation: Academic. Institute of Sociology. Catholic University of Temuco (Chile).

Education

03/1989-12/1996 Primary school Italia in Osorno (Chile).

03/1997-12/2000 Highschool in San Mateo College in Osorno (Chile)

Studies

03/2001 - 12/2005 Studies at the University de la Frontera, Temuco [Bachelor in Sociology).

03/2006 - 12/2006 Thesis for the degree of Sociologist <>. Note: 7,0 (maximum).

03/2009 – 12/2009 Diploma. Visual Anthropology and Audiovisual Social Research. Catholic University of Temuco.

04/2010 – 04/2014 PhD studies in Labour Studies, Sociology of Work and Economic Sociology. Thesis <>. Institute of Sociology. University Friedrich-Schiller, Jena. Germany.

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Work experience

09/2013 – 12/2013

Assistant at The College Postwachstumsgesellschaften. Jena, Germany.

10/2012 – 03/2013

Assistant at the college Postwachstumsgesellschaften. Jena, Germany.

04/2012 – 08/2012

Researcher in the project "Regional Development Strategy Magallanes." Institute of Regional and Local Development (IDER). Regional Government of Magallanes.

04/2011 – 04/2013

Co-Researcher in the project "Political Change and New Industrial Relations in Chile. A study addressingthe reconfiguration of trade union subjectivities and working conditions in the public health sector and retail "(DIUFRO 2011).

01/2010 – 03/2010

Study: Characterization of Regional Innovation Systems in Chile. Inter- American Development Bank (IDB). Institute of Regional and Local Development (IDER).

09/2009 – 03/2010

Study: Scientific Information policy in Chile. National Commission for Research in Science and Technology (CONICYT). Institute of Regional and Local Development (IDER).

10/2008 – 12/2009

Research: emerging scientific and technological platforms to increase the competitiveness of productive sectors with potential identified in Chile. Secretariat of Economy, Development and Reconstruction. Institute of Local and Regional Development (IDER), University of La Frontera.

01/2009 – 12/2009

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Study. Regional Identity of Araucanía. Undersecretary of Regional Development. (SUBDERE). Institute of Regional and Local Development (IDER), University of La Frontera.

06/2009 – 07/2009

Supervisor surveys application. Human Development Index in the region of Araucanía. United Nations. Program for Development (UNDP). 01/2009 Research and Discussion group coordinator. Youth Study Reality and public offering. National Youth Institute (INJUV). Social Observatory of the University Alberto Hurtado (OSUAH).

06/2008 – 12/2008

Impact Assessment Study and results of regional centers. National Commission for Research in Science and Technology (CONICYT). Institute of Regional and Local Development (IDER).

03/2008 Study Supervisor. Human Development Index in the region of Araucanía. United Nations Program for Development (UNDP).

04/2008 – 06/2008

Development and coordination of surveys and focus group research "Quality of life and employment in the region of Araucania". Social Observatory of the University Alberto Hurtado (OSUAH). Research commissioned by the Provisional Institute of Normalization (INP) and the Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare.

06/2007 – 06/2008

Research on changing world of work and impact on collective subjectivities. Universidad de la Frontera. Temuco.

Development and design proposal for the establishment of the Centre of Social Sciences at the Universidad de la Frontera (Current draft Sociological Research Observatory). Proposal for Accreditation of the Career of Sociology, University of La Frontera. Temuco.

Jena, 1.Juli 2015

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Title page (below)

Expert

1 _Dr. Prof. Klaus Dörre______

2 _Dr. Prof. Christopher Köhler______

Date of examination: ______

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